Data usage trends allow for more granular control of budget planning, as knowing how much storage space is required can help avoid situations where not enough space has been provisioned.
In the Chapter 1, Introduction to Design Methodology, we spoke about the procurement process of businesses, and how trying to stick to the timelines is essential as this varies from company to company. Understanding space requirements and usage is crucial for this process, since it can help predict, for example, when the solution will run out of space and can help make decisions around acquiring new storage space.
Knowing if the business consumes X amount of storage per day (also known as the daily change rate) through the use of a monitoring system allows system administrators and architects to predict how long the business can run with the space that is currently available. This will also allow them to predict when the solution will run out of space so that they can act before it runs out of storage—which is a situation that every IT department should avoid.
Understanding resource utilization is crucial to any business, as it prevents unnecessary equipment acquisition. Using data to decide whether more resources should be added to the existing environment or not reduces costs by choosing the right amount of equipment to be added in the case of upgrades. It's not the same when the application is under-performing due to a lack of resources (or outdated hardware) rather than having data that confirms that the current environment is working as expected and still has some room for growth.
Today, the need for monitoring is more crucial than ever. With the almost exponential growth of data within IT environments, being able to predict behaviors and act proactively can be achieved through data-driven decisions, which is only possible through monitoring systems, such as the ELK Stack.