DBAs are impossible to please, so why bother? You’re in a meeting to talk about a new order processing application that requires back-end storage, which, as the storage admin, you will be responsible for setting up and maintaining. You’ve had conversations with the DBA about the storage requirements for the project, which at the time, were reasonable – the new application will need to support 1000 users, driving 20,000 transactions per minute at peak load. You and the DBA settled on the storage required to support this – 5 TB, 5,000 IOPS, 5 ms latency and RAID-5 protection. A complicated proposition, but you’ll get there with some creative caching and tiering so it won’t break the bank. vs Six weeks later, the other shoe drops. Surprise, surprise, the requirements have totally changed. The project will now be required to support 5,000 users driving 100,000 transactions per minute. The storage requirements have sky rocketed – 20 TB, 20,000 IOPS, 0.5 ms latency and RAID 10. The storage architecture you’ve just spent weeks putting together is completely useless. And there is no budget to purchase the latest and greatest gear… So how can you solve the problem? First, you need to get into your DBA’s head to understand where these requirements and last-minute requests are coming from. What is most important to him/her? Finally you need to understand that there is a better way.