Storage efficiency is about getting the most storage at the lowest cost. To calculate an organization’s storage efficiency, add the actual and free capacity of the hardware and divide by the raw capacity. RAID systems can compromise storage efficiency, but techniques like snapshot technology can increase it.
When saving information for an organization, the main trade-off is between the cost of storage and the amount and type of information stored. Storage efficiency is all about getting the most storage at the lowest possible cost. A storage efficient organization can hold more data on its drives without impacting the performance or cost of the entire network system. Overall, increasing storage efficiency will reduce expenses within the organization, enabling the business to more effectively maximize the potential of its hardware.
Storage efficiency is determined using a fairly simple equation. To calculate an organization’s storage efficiency, a person simply adds the actual capacity of the organization’s hardware plus the free available capacity of the hardware. The result is divided by the hardware’s declared raw capacity to achieve the Storage Efficiency Percentage, given in decimal format. Most organizations fall in the 40 to 70 percent range.
To understand how storage efficiency can be compromised through superior organizational storage techniques, consider a RAID (redundant array of inexpensive disks) storage system. Many companies use mirroring, which is a RAID storage technique in which information is written to two or more hard drives simultaneously, providing a real-time backup for all of the company’s data. This effectively halves the storage capacity of the hard drives used, since two 160 gigabyte (GB) hard drives – which would normally allow for 320GB of raw storage space – provide only half that on a RAID array, since both drives they actually work as a single “mirrored” volume. In terms of storage efficiency, a RAID volume using mirrored drives would only provide 50% efficiency; the actual mirrored storage potential of 160GB divided by the theoretical storage maximum of 320GB for the independent drives.
There are techniques for increasing the efficiency of storage within a system by reducing the cost of storing data on a drive. One such technique is snapshot technology, which, instead of saving multiple copies of an altered file, saves only the actual changed values between files. So, while a “normal” backup system would save two complete versions of an altered database file, the old and the new, a snapshot would only save a single instance, followed by a smaller file indicating the changes made to the file.
Protect your devices with Threat Protection by NordVPN
