Patent ID: 8725980

Claim:
A method of identifying 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: storing primary data created by a plurality of software applications on a plurality of primary storage devices in a primary storage system, wherein the primary data is stored in native formats associated with the plurality of software applications; storing at least one or more secondary copies of the primary data on one or more secondary storage devices in a secondary storage system, wherein the one or more secondary copies are stored in one or more different formats than the native formats of the primary data; managing with a storage manager, one or more secondary copy storage operations that copy at least a portion of the primary data to create the one or more secondary copies using a plurality of data agents associated with the plurality of software applications and a plurality of media management components associated with the one or more secondary storage devices, said managing secondary copy storage operations further comprising: packaging primary data on the plurality of primary storage devices with the plurality of data agents to create packaged primary data, wherein each data agent packages primary data of a predefined data type, receiving the packaged primary data at the plurality of media management components, the plurality of media management components configured to process the packaged primary data for different types of the one or more secondary storage devices, and creating one or more secondary copies of the packaged primary data on the one or more secondary storage devices; receiving information associated with the secondary copy storage operations that relates to at least a trend of a number of active data agents; forecasting with the storage manager, a need for data storage capacity in the primary storage system based at least on the trend of the number of active data agents; and identifying one or more primary storage system resources to be added to the primary storage system based on the forecasting; forecasting with the storage manager, a need for additional data storage capacity in the secondary storage system based at least on the trend of the number of active data agents in the primary storage system; and identifying one or more secondary storage system resources to be added to the second storage system based on the forecasting.