“Facts are stubborn things.”
— John Adams

A reader asked me to make a list of ten rules of storage management which he could run his enterprise on, without breaking his budget or running out of storage. A sort of Generally Acceptable Storage Principles, that correlates to the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. Perhaps we should start a group called GASP 🙂 .

Rule 1) Never run out of storage – Running out of storage will stop your business.
Rule 2) Storage is king – Your business requires access to its data storage assets to remain in business. Without your data, you are out of business.
Rule 3) Know your available storage now! – How much actual, tangible, available storage do you have now.
Rule 4) What is your storage balance? – Was there any change in your daily storage balance of available storage, and storage reserves. Why?
Rule 5) You can’t manage storage on a monthly basis – Available storage is used daily with unpredictable spikes and valleys. A monthly synopsis may tell you that you are running out of storage too late to react and head off a storage shortage that negatively impacts your business
Rule 6) Forecast your Storage – what is your forecast growth for the next 6 months, can your available storage inventory last that long
Rule 7) Storage problems don’t just happen – There will always be leading indicators prior to a storage failure, or available storage shortage . Learn the signs.
Rule 8) Unused storage has a cost – Unused storage inventory costs money to maintain. Empty disks cost money to purchase and keep spinning. What is your unused storage holding cost?
Rule 9) Know the Internal Rate of Return for your storage -Any underutilized business equipment has a carrying cost. Service, support and upgrades for under utilized storage is wasteful.
Rule 10) Maintain good relations with your storage customers – Alienating your storage users will create storage backwaters and raise the overall cost of storage.