capacity optimization (CO)

The term Capacity Optimization (CO) is used in information technology for the optimization of the storage capacity of storage media and in network technology for Bandwidth Optimization.

As far as the capacity optimization of storage media is concerned, this involves procedures for data reduction, datadeduplication and data compression. The aim of capacity optimization is to make better use of the available storage media. Optimization reduces the volume of data by a factor of 20 or more. In capacity optimization, data is analyzed in terms of repetitive patterns and redundancies, which are stored as shorter data sets.

In the case of storage media, there are various methods with which the storage density can be increased and thus the storage capacity optimized. One of these is Shingled Magnetic Recording( SMR). This is an optimization technique for increasing the storage density of hard disks by optimizing the track positions. The tracks have a smaller distance to each other and partially overlap. Another method, Variable Track Capacity Recording(VTCR), optimizes the tracks by working with variable sectors. Partial Response Maximum Likelihood( PRML) is another optimization method that works with patterns based on probability. For magnetic tapes, the optimization method for storage space is tape stacking.