Is It Time to Completely Rethink Backup Capacity Planning? Part 1
Redmond Magazine, Tuesday, August 4th, 2026
Backup capacity planning should use probability-based forecasts instead of rigid growth assumptions.
Brien Posey argues that traditional backup capacity planning fails because it assumes the future is predictable, as in taking 500TB of data growing 15% per year and rounding up.
That growth rate is often unverified, and plausible events like longer retention periods, changed deduplication ratios, acquisitions, or a new AI project can derail the estimate. Capacity planning has always been about probability and hedging, but nobody likes to talk about the uncertainty.
Posey suggests treating capacity planning like weather forecasting, where forecasters express confidence as probabilities rather than certainties, and narrowing the plausible range using historical bounds.