This section provides guidelines for estimating the initial storage space required for your installation. You have the following default random access (disk) storage pools available at installation:
You can add space to these storage pools by adding volumes, or you can define additional storage pools.
As your storage environment grows, you may want to consider how policy and storage pool definitions affect where workstation files are stored. Then you can define and maintain multiple storage pools in a hierarchy that allows you to control storage costs by using sequential access storage pools in addition to disk storage pools, and still provide appropriate levels of service to users.
To help you determine how to adjust your policies and storage pools, get information about how much storage is being used (by client node) and for what purposes in your existing storage pools. For more information on how to do this, see Requesting Information on the Use of Storage Space.
To estimate the amount of storage space required for each random access (disk) storage pool:
See Choosing Appropriate Migration Threshold Values for recommendations on setting migration thresholds.
To estimate the total amount of space needed for all backed-up files stored in a single random access (disk) storage pool, use the following formula:
Backup space = WkstSize * Utilization * VersionExpansion * NumWkst
where:
If clients use compression, the amount of space required may be less than the amount calculated, depending on whether the data is compressible.
Estimating the amount of storage space for archived files is more difficult, because the number of archived files generated by users is not necessarily related to the amount of data stored on their workstations.
To estimate the total amount of space needed for all archived files in a single random access (disk) storage pool, determine what percentage of user files are typically archived.
Work with policy administrators to calculate this percentage based on the number and type of archive copy groups defined. For example, if policy administrators have defined archive copy groups for only half of the policy domains in your enterprise, then estimate that you need less than 50% of the amount of space you have defined for backed-up files.
Because additional storage space can be added at any time, you can start with a modest amount of storage space and increase the space by adding storage volumes to the archive storage pool, as required.
To estimate the amount of space required for sequential access storage pools, consider:
See Reclaiming Space in Sequential Access Storage Pools for information about setting a reclamation threshold.
If you use collocation, you may need additional tape drives and volumes.
See Keeping a Client's Files Together: Collocation for information about using collocation for your storage pools.