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Merit Network Blog Manage It or Just Buy More     By Donald J. Welch - August 28, 2008 8:49 am Back in the 80s I was the computer support director for my academic department at West Point. We were running out of network file space. I was lamenting to one of my colleagues that most of the space was taken up with junk. There were multiple copies of programs, and documents. There were files that had not been accessed in years. I was trying to determine the best way to manage all this data so that we would not run out of space. My friend looked at me and said, “it is always cheaper to just buy more than to manage it.” My friend is one of the most brilliant men I’ve ever known so I didn’t dismiss his comment out of hand. What he was saying, just really went against my instincts. Waste is a bad thing. I can point to lots of examples in the physical world and I’m sure you can too. But it turns out in this case he was right. Before I had a solution worked out to manage our data, the prices on disks came down and we got twice as much storage with our server upgrade as we’d planned. I have thought about what he said a number of times throughout my career as I have had to make the “manage vs. buy” decision. One of the guiding principles of my career in IT has been, “try not to make decisions that look really stupid six months later.” Unfortunately, this is knowledge I gained the hard way. The “manage vs. buy” decision is usually fertile ground for these types of mistakes because there is pain and cost associated with managing consumption and the price/performance curve is not always as predictable as I predict. I was thinking about this as a read How WAN deduplication can aid WAN acceleration in Network World. Basically, there are a number of different ways that deduplication can be implemented. Each has their pros and cons. Under certain circumstances deduplication can even hurt performance. To make the right decision in WAN deduplication, you have to know your own traffic, know the implementation and how it will perform on your traffic, and know the future of WAN performance and cost. I’m sure I’ve left out some other important factors, but you get the idea. One of the great things about my career in IT is that it keeps me humble. There are always plenty of decisions like this, which have the potential to look really dumb in retrospect. Being over-confident just makes it worse. Post a Comment   Blog Archive   Merit Stimulus Blog Merit Stimulus Blog 11.16.09 By Gregory Monroe - November 16, 2009 9:50 am Merit Stimulus Blog Merit Stimulus Blog 11.12.09 By Gregory Monroe - November 12, 2009 12:35 pm Merit Stimulus Blog Merit Stimulus Blog 11.3.09 By Gregory Monroe - November 03, 2009 12:21 pm Merit Network Blog Members in the News 10.30 By Brian Warkoczeski - October 29, 2009 4:28 pm Merit Stimulus Blog Merit Stimulus Blog 10.26.09 By Gregory Monroe - October 26, 2009 10:42 am Merit Stimulus Blog Merit Stimulus Blog 10.19.09 By Gregory Monroe - October 19, 2009 10:58 am Merit Network Blog Members in the News 10.08 By Brian Warkoczeski - October 08, 2009 1:03 pm Merit Stimulus Blog Merit Stimulus Blog 10.6.09 By Gregory Monroe - October 06, 2009 1:19 pm Merit Stimulus Blog Merit Stimulus Blog 9.29.09 By Gregory Monroe - September 29, 2009 12:33 pm Merit Stimulus Blog Merit Stimulus Blog 9.21.09 By Gregory Monroe - September 21, 2009 12:35 pm Merit Stimulus Blog Merit Stimulus Blog 9.16.09 By Gregory Monroe - September 16, 2009 12:41 pm Merit Stimulus Blog Merit Stimulus Blog 9.8.09 By Gregory Monroe - September 08, 2009 11:25 am Merit Stimulus Blog Merit Stimulus Blog 8.24.09 By Gregory Monroe - August 24, 2009 10:36 am Merit Stimulus Blog Merit Stimulus Blog 8.17.09 By Gregory Monroe - August 17, 2009 12:09 pm Merit Network Blog Members in the News 8.14 By Brian Warkoczeski - August 14, 2009 9:14 am Professional Learning MJTS Call for Presentations By Brian Warkoczeski - August 06, 2009 12:53 pm Merit Stimulus Blog Members in the News 7.24 By Brian Warkoczeski - July 24, 2009 12:47 pm Merit Stimulus Blog Merit Stimulus Blog 7.21.09 By Gregory Monroe - July 21, 2009 11:29 am Merit Network Blog Members in the News 7.16 By Brian Warkoczeski - July 16, 2009 11:05 am Merit Stimulus Blog Merit Stimulus Blog 7.13.09 By Gregory Monroe - July 13, 2009 11:06 am Merit Stimulus Blog Merit Stimulus Blog 7.7.09 By Gregory Monroe - July 07, 2009 11:19 am Merit Stimulus Blog Merit Stimulus Blog 7.2.09 By Gregory Monroe - July 02, 2009 11:55 am Merit Network Blog Members in the News 6.30 By Brian Warkoczeski - June 30, 2009 4:20 pm Merit Network Blog NANOG46 Videos Available By Brian Warkoczeski - June 25, 2009 9:31 am Merit Stimulus Blog Merit Stimulus Blog 6.23.09 By Gregory Monroe - June 23, 2009 11:54 am Professional Learning Archived Merit Member Conference videos now available By Brian Warkoczeski - June 17, 2009 9:43 am Merit Stimulus Blog Merit Stimulus Blog 6.15.09 By Gregory Monroe - June 15, 2009 11:41 am Professional Learning Merit Member Conference Concludes By Brian Warkoczeski - June 12, 2009 3:57 pm Professional Learning Day Two of Merit Member Conference Begins By Brian Warkoczeski - June 12, 2009 10:32 am Professional Learning Dale Dougherty Brings Ingenuity to Merit Member Conference By Brian Warkoczeski - June 11, 2009 2:47 pm Professional Learning Merit Member Conference Extra! 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