How much data storage space do you need as a business owner? If you have too little of it, you’ll be stuck with a sluggish service prone to process delays and even system crashes. On the contrary, too much of data storage will bleed your budget as you waste money on the upkeep and maintenance of servers that you have absolutely no use for.

That’s why you must define your data storage requirements before taking your business online. Let’s take a look at how to set your requirements for maximum efficiency.

Methods of inputting data

The first thing you will need to consider is how you consume data and where it comes from. For example:

• Will you be getting your data directly from your consumers?
• Will you be processing data that is stored on your servers?
• Will it be a hybrid environment where consumers input data and you store it for consumption?

The amount of data that comes purely from outside your network will require less storage space than the latter scenarios where you will need to keep them on your servers.

What is your data usage format?

If you will always be working on the raw data you have gathered from your consumers (in cases where all you will need to do is display them, for example) it will make your processing less cumbersome. But, then again, if you will need to perform calculations on it – and maybe even store it in its processed formats – you will need much more disk space and processing power.

Things get much more complicated (and expensive) if you have to store your data in both raw and processed formats. While this might help cut down on the need to re-process your data, it will inflate your data storage requirements. This is a time when you will need to look into some serious optimization.

Collaboration matters

If you have a group of your staff accessing your data from various devices or locations at the same time, you will need to take collaboration seriously. The processing power that is required to handle multiple accesses of your data, as well as the applications that will need to be run when doing so, will define how much RAM will be required. In short: the more complex the collaboration processes and the more people you have working together, the bigger a requirement you will have for storage space and processing power.

The PC versus server issue

Today, there are laptops and desktop computers that have terabytes of storage space on their local hard disks. People who are used to working in a stand-alone environment where they store and retrieve data from their machines, will see no point in having to worry about servers, and your staff are no different.

You will need to do a concise study on how much of the data on your staff’s devices will need to either be fully moved on to your servers or, at least, need to be synced at regular intervals. A good way to go about it would be to sit everyone down and discuss the advantages (and disadvantages) of having to move their data to a central and more secure server. This will serve as a measuring stick for the amount of space you will need on your servers.

Expected growth

Don’t get caught off guard if you see a sudden influx of data, traffic, or processing requests. You will need to implement a forecasting mechanism (depending on your business’ progressive growth) which will help you estimate, and anticipate, the amount of data storage space and processing power you will need in the future. With that data in hand, you will be able to invest in a precautionary amount of extra disk space.

Cloud storage option

While you think about how much server space you need, don’t forget that there’s a much cheaper option: cloud storage. A business that doesn’t seriously consider moving to the cloud and storing as much of its data in the cloud as possible, will certainly be at a disadvantage. Apart from eliminating the need of owning your own servers, cloud storage will also cut your administrative and overhead costs.

With so many great cloud hosting service providers out there, there is really no need for you to spend sleepless nights worrying about the security and day-to-day administration of your data storage.

Ease of backup and restore

The health of your business’ data storage will be secured by a tested and tried back up and restoring plan. When planning the amount of storage space you will need, you should also consider how you will be backing it up, where you will be storing the backup data and how quickly (and efficiently) you will be able to restore it should you face a disaster.

And there you have it; with these steps, you should be able to optimally define your business’ data storage requirements. If you are a business owner and have had to define your data storage requirements, let us know what other points you had taken into consideration to achieve that optimal amount of storage space.