Re: DASD upgrade - an endless problem

[MacWheel99@xxxxxxx]

We worked with EMC memory back on the old S/36 & their guarantee was fabulous 
... if anything goes wrong, there was a user switch to disconnect EMC memory 
from the box & if IBM CE ever claimed problem due to EMC, EMC would pay the 
IBM bill.  But we never ever had any problems with their stuff.  Plus EMC 
memory cost half as much as IBM memory & supported more memory on S/36 than 
IBM did.  But I never worked with their storage.

I have also been in the scenario of persuading management to buy more DASD & 
having some estimate of future needs, which less than a year later turned out 
to be totally off base, then getting more DASD, then less than a year later 
being in the same boat.

The problem for us was:
1. Managers wanted to apply an estimate of 10% overall corporate growth to 
DASD needs, but overall corporate growth was rather irrelevant.  In fact we 
just closed a facility, but our disk space consumption is up in the short 
term (translation for at least a year after it was closed).
2. Our growth in DASD needs was mainly due to churning & retention.
Churning means new customers, lose them, new customers, lose them, new model 
lines from old customers, lose them, engineering changes, those model lines 
gone, but folks need to keep history on-line for a while.  
3. non-MIS staff was very busy adding data associated with new customers & 
new model lines & engineering changes, and seldom had the time to work on 
getting rid of data associated with products we no longer manufacturing or 
servicing.
4. MIS staff was very busy adding new features & enhancements, and seldom had 
time to work on software to expedite removal of obsolete data.

The challenge in this environment is to translate what we are using disk 
space for, and decision structure, into estimated future needs & alternatives 
... add DASD or add staff to manage it better.

MacWheel99@aol.com (Alister Wm Macintyre) (Al Mac)
AS/400 Data Manager & Programmer for BPCS 405 CD Rel-02 mixed mode 

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