How to make good use of technology

The following is an interesting view of orphaned storage, or stranded capacity will vary you look at your own data/storage stack:

Storage Capacity Definition

• Changing RAID levels will impact the delta between RAW and Usable.
  
• Array virtualization will reduce the waste between usable and allocated
• Thin provisioning will save space differences between allocated and used
• Deduplication will impact utilized and application content
• Archive will reduce both allocated and utilized volumes
• SRM will help in managing and monitoring all the areas above

The right architecture is needed to right-size the total storage estate. Look at short term and long term options to improve ROA and overall utilization.

But the ultimate goal is to reduce TCO, so we should make a balance among several aspects such like performance, space efficiency and purchase budget and maintance cost.