A storage capacity management software company called MonoSphere recently introduced the interesting concept called dark storage: the storage space wasted by inefficient capacity allocation.
MonoSphere states that customers waste on average 30% of storage despite the yearly spending raises of 10% to 15% every year.
The raw storage becomes configured storage, then it’s mapped to a host server (allocated storage), then it’s recognized by the hardware (claimed storage), then it’s presented as volumes (assigned storage), and finally is used by the applications (used storage).
At each step MonoSphere recognizes inefficiency which prevent the optimal allocation of 90-95% of the available space.
Since virtualization introduces an additional abstraction level, it should aggravate the issue, so it’s not surprising that MonoSphere joined the VMware Technology Alliance Partner Program and just announced support for ESX in their Storage Horizon 3.7.
The product recognizes and reports the dark storage, providing a cost analysis and a forecast of the storage usage and waste over time.
When used with VMware it highlights the relationship between the hosts, the VMs and the storage space.
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Thanks to Jon William Toigo for the news.