How much is too much? update from October 2005

Okay, so today if I need more storage, I can:- Add more disks to my SAN or NAS array.- Add more arrays to my network.- Move to a vendor that handles more disks.- Increase disk sizes to half a Gigabyte.

Seriously, at this point how much more do we need?

I can pick up a terabyte of SOHO NAS for 1 thousand dollars. Most SOHOs don't have anywhere near a terabyte of data, so what is the point?

Same is true with the Uber-SANs. There is an incredibly small market that needs multiple petabytes of data, the rest of us, even the insurance and utilities crowd, can live with multiple terabytes.

Double the requirements for replication. There you go. Most organizations don't need more than twenty terabytes or so, and we've technologically caught up with the current rate of growth.

The real growth areas are broadcasting and home users. USB drives and End User NAS arrays are going to get big as people store more pictures, video, and music on their network.

But they're not going to be that big. Lori and I have had nearly all of our 600 CDs on our network for years (we were an early AudioTron customer), and they don't take up 80 Gigabytes. That says it all. I have a USB drive that would hold those 600 CDs and still leave me room to save all of my writing on it.

At some point, this industry will suffer a shakeup based on storage growth. Bigger disks win, meaning large arrays and stuff aren't going to be unless some new storage requirements come up pretty soon.Just my thoughts.