**Parent Topic**: [[Software/README]] ## Storage Is Expensive — Spend Deliberately Storage "is one of the most costly components of any modern infrastructure," so purchases should be deliberate and data-backed. At one company, Nagwani sat on a hardware/software review committee (a co-founder, executives, and technical experts) where "the most common outcome was that requests were denied because they lacked the proper data to support them." Engineers often asked for too much or too little, without sound capacity projections, disaster-recovery strategy, or a reason a managed system was needed over a server's internal disks. ## Make Every Purchase Earn Its Approval The committee ensured "every purchase was deliberate, necessary, and backed by data describing exactly what the requirements were, and the reasoning behind the solution." Nagwani carried "the spirit of this committee" to later companies to keep storage purchases data-driven, with an effective business-continuity plan and a proper capacity plan. ## The Sizing Questions Whether requesting or reviewing storage, work through: the application and location; data types and typical file sizes; shared-storage and protocol needs; whether the workload is read/write and sequential/random; snapshot schedule and consistency level; **6/12/18-month capacity and workload projections**; replication strategy and business-continuity plan; availability requirements; backup frequency and retention; archiving, compliance, and encryption requirements. The discipline that turns [[Maintain Capacity Headroom]] from a guess into a plan. --- *Source: [[Web Operations]] (Allspaw & Robbins, O'Reilly 2010) — Ch 14 — Storage*