Patent ID: 8266406

Claim:
A method of identifying new storage system resources to be added to a storage system, wherein the method is performed by a computing system having a processor and memory, the method comprising: determining a number of job failures considered a fault occurrence; managing backup storage operations between a plurality of clients, and a plurality of storage devices based on a storage policy using a plurality of data agents residing on the plurality of clients and a plurality of media management components associated with the storage devices, further comprising: packaging data on the plurality of clients with the plurality of data agents, wherein each data agent is configured to package data of a predefined data type, receiving the packaged data at the plurality of media management components, wherein different media management components are configured to process the packaged data for different types of the storage devices, at least one media management component processing the packaged data for a tape drive and at least one media management component processing the packaged data for a disk drive such that the storage devices contain a backup copy of the data located on the data store, receiving at a time T 0 information relating to at least a trend of a number of active data agents, a trend of a number of active media management components, and a trend of a number of fault occurrences, wherein the storage system is associated with storage system resources having a total data storage capacity of X units, where X is a positive integer, and the received information includes information regarding the total data storage capacity of the storage system resources; analyzing, by the computing system, at least the trend of the number of active data agents, the trend of the number of active media management components, and the trend of the number of fault occurrences; based at least on the trend of the number of active data agents, the trend of the number of active media management components, and the trend of the number of fault occurrences, automatically load balancing the media management components; based at least on the trend of the number of active data agents, the trend of the number of active media management components, and the trend of the number of fault occurrences further forecasting data storage needs of the storage system, wherein the forecasting includes forecasting a need for X+Y units of total data storage capacity in the storage system, where Y is a positive integer; and based on the forecasting, identifying new storage system resources to be added to the storage system at a time T, that is after the time T 0 , wherein the new storage system resources do not form part of the storage system prior to the identifying, the new storage system resources have a total data storage capacity of at least Y units, and the new storage system resources include at least one tape drive or disk drive.