Rules of Thumb in Data Engineering
This is an interesting and still relevant research paper by Jim Gray, Prashant Shenoy at Microsoft Research that examines the rules of thumb for the design of data storage systems. It looks at storage, processing, and networking costs, ratios, and trends with a particular focus on performance and price/performance.
Jim Gray has an updated presentation on this interesting topic: Long Term Storage Trends and You. Robin Harris has a great post that reflects on the Rules of Thumb whitepaper on his StorageMojo blog: Architecting the Internet Data Center - Parts I-IV.