# Enterprise Capacity Plan

> Forecast when you run out of space at three levels: group, device, and pool.

Enterprise Capacity Plan forecasts when storage runs out, and it does it at three levels: group, device, and pool. Most teams check only one of these, usually device, and each level catches a failure mode the others miss. Visual One plans at all three; most tools stop at the device.

![Enterprise capacity plan by data center with planning metric, capacity type and forecast controls, showing used capacity against effective capacity thresholds with annotated migration and new workload events](https://visualoneintelligence.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/voi-docs-enterprise-capacity-plan.png)

## What this screen shows

Used capacity plotted against effective capacity and warning thresholds, with a forecast horizon in months or years. The plan runs at whatever scope you select: a whole data center, a device group you define, a single device, or a single pool. Planning can use capacity or performance as the metric, and the two dimensions together determine what an upgrade actually needs to deliver.

## Why three levels

| Level | What it catches | The failure mode it prevents |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Group | Imbalance across arrays sharing a role | Buying capacity when rebalancing would do |
| Device | The standard per-array runway | The annual spreadsheet exercise, done continuously instead |
| Pool | Hidden capacity need inside healthy-looking devices | A full pool causing an outage on a device with free space |

**Group plans** treat arrays that share a role as one unit. That reframes upgrades as balancing questions. In one case, a device-level plan showed a $500,000 upgrade needed on one of two arrays doing the same job in the same data center; the group-level plan showed zero needed, because the pair had enough combined capacity. Rebalancing the workload between them, a storage vMotion in that VMware environment, replaced the purchase entirely.

**Device plans** are where most manual capacity planning happens today. Running them continuously replaces the annual spreadsheet exercise.

**Pool plans** catch the hidden capacity need. A device with one giant pool and one small pool can look healthy at the device level while the small pool is weeks from full. Allocations cannot span pools, so a full pool is a real outage risk even on a device with free space. The weekly analysis runs pool plans automatically and flags pools approaching their limit.

> **Tip:** If a device has multiple pools, never rely on the device-level plan alone. The pool plan is where the surprises are.

## Related screens

[Trends](https://visualoneintelligence.com/docs/storage-trends/) shows the historical growth the forecast extends. [Enterprise Summary](https://visualoneintelligence.com/docs/storage-enterprise-summary/) shows the pool counts that determine how much pool-level planning matters for each device.

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Source: https://visualoneintelligence.com/docs/storage-capacity-plan/