OPTIMIZING STORAGE CAPACITY UTILIZATION BASED UPON DATA STORAGE COSTS

摘要

The present invention automatically determines when capacity utilization balancing is to be performed for a group of storage units in the storage environment. A source storage unit is determined from the group of storage units from which data is to be moved to balance capacity utilization. Utilized-capacity balancing is performed by moving data files from the source storage unit to one or more target storage units in the group of storage unit. The storage units in a group may be assigned to one or more servers. The first managed group (301) includes four volumes (V1, V2, V3, and V4). Volumes (V1) and (V2) are assigned to server (S1), and volumes (V3) and (V4) are assigned to server (S2). The second managed group (302) includes three volumes (V4) and (V5) assigned to server (S2), and (V6) assigned to server (S3). Managed group (303) includes (V7) and (V8) assigned to server (S4).