Getting Back to the Basics of Storage Management

RAID technology also brought with it tools to help manage this new DASD. The combination of hardware technology and software tools enabled storage administrators to manage the storage devices and the growth. The raw cost of RAID DASD became very inexpensive and with it the necessity to "Manage" the devices to the same degree as before. These factors drove the ratio of one storage admin for every two or three terabytes to an unthinkable one storage admin for every fifty terabytes. In some data centers, the ratios are even higher! Although the raw cost of RAID DASD is cheap, today's economic conditions have both management and the IT staff looking at the bigger picture and realizing that the total cost of storage ownership is expensive.