Why use tiered storage

Automated storage tiering enables policy-based data transfers between storage tiers as per user performance and capacity requirements. The feature effectively uses available tiered storage architecture and reduces data management complexity via automation.

In addition to effectively utilizing on-premises tiered storage architecture, StoneFly storage OS also enables cloud storage integration as tier 3 storage. Everything you need to know about Tiered Storage.

What is Tiered Storage? How Does Tiered Storage Work? Tiered Storage Architecture Tiered data storage architecture can range from a simple two-tier storage architecture, which may consist of iSCSI or Fibre Channel FC attached disk and tape storage, or a more complex infrastructure with five to six or maximum ten tiers. Tiered Storage Data Classification Business data can typically be classified into the following tiers: Mission Critical Data — This is data necessary for business operation and requires expensive highspeed storage media for uninterrupted disruption-free access and usage.

The loss or unavailability of mission critical data means loss of business and downtime. Examples include customer transactions, ticketing systems, etc.

Hot Data — Data that is frequently used and constantly accessed is classified as hot data. Second only to mission critical data in priority, hot data also requires expensive and fast storage media. Warm Data — Infrequently used and a few days old data is classified as warm data. Tiered Storage. Solve your tiered storage challenges with Dell EMC. Learn More. The cost and complexity of tiered storage. Managing the movement of data to and from performance-optimized and capacity-optimized drives can be enormously complex, and many organizations lack the tools to simplify or automate this task.

Cost and control. Cloud-based storage, which offers certain economies of scale, nevertheless makes it harder to maintain control over data. And performing analytics on a cloud archive typically requires organizations to move data out of a cold archive first, incurring costs for data egress.

When tiered storage solution is built on a variety of storage media and data management tools, resolving issues and managing upgrades can be a nightmare.

Configurations from 60 TB to 8. Geo-distributed data protection with no single point of failure. Active multi-site access to all types of files across the globe.

Storage-as-a-service features that include a self-service portal, detailed metering, multi-tenancy, metadata search and management, billing integration, advanced retention management, and more. Every organization has their own preferred method of madness, but this post is all about an emerging enterprise trend called tiered storage. Tiered storage takes a highly targeted approach to storage. For example, a medical office may keep the records for new patients on an internal hard drive that offers quick and easy access.

Instead of treating every bit of data the same, you assign different values based on retention, compliance requirements, and storage preferences. Done right, tiered storage can help organizations optimize crucial resources, improve access to data, and trim storage costs. For many organizations, data classification is the first step in tiered storage planning.

It also tends to be among the most challenging. Enterprise data generally falls in three categories. However, you could end up with many more segments depending on your infrastructure and requirements. The best way to approach this aspect is to build your classification efforts around business value, existing policies, and data management tools.

Cold data. This sort of data has to be retained, but it may never be accessed again. Perhaps there are regulatory reasons to keep it, or it might be unstructured data that has big data mining uses in the future.

Cold data like this should be stored based on low cost, with access times of minutes or hours. Except for very small businesses, manual storage tiering is almost always too impractical and time consuming to work well. Most tiered storage systems deploy automated storage tiering, moving data through the tiers automatically as it moves through its lifecycle, cooling.

This kind of tier data management system software may be a standalone solution, part of a cloud storage gateway, or part of a single storage system. However, for the purposes of this article, Tier 1 storage will refer to the storage tier with the highest performance. Tier 1 data storage is designed for data which is highly time-sensitive, volatile, and must be accessed quickly—in as close to real time as possible.

For example, in a stock trading environment, where huge amounts of money can be lost in an instant, only the fastest Tier 1 storage will work. Therefore, regardless of overall storage efficiency, at the Tier 1 level the storage media is typically very fast, solid state storage configured for the best possible performance, without regard to cost.

Tier 2 data storage. Tier 2 is typically used to store transactional support data for customer-facing systems such as retail applications, and other high-performance applications where only extremely short delays will work.

A step down from Tier 1, a Tier 2 storage solution will usually utilize a more cost efficient storage system. Tier 3 data storage. Compared to Tier 1 and Tier 2, this usually means medium to high performance, high capacity hard drives at a low cost per Gigabyte stored and substantially more data. Tier 4 data storage is where warm data from older emails and recently completed transactions goes—anything that needs to be accessed less often, but still regularly and without too much delay.

Typical Tier 4 storage requirements include very large capacity and affordability, so high capacity, relatively low performance hard disk drive storage, such as SATA drives rather than high performance RAID arrays or SAS disks, are a more common solution. Tier 5 data storage is for archiving cold data for the future. Since there is time to retrieve this kind of data and cost is the overriding factor here, cloud storage tiers, optical media, or disk and tape storage systems are great choices.

Modern multi-tiered storage architectures may be simple or complex. Two tier and Three tier storage architectures still exist, and some systems include five or six tiers, including storage tiering in cloud platforms. In a multi-tiered storage architecture, the various storage media are organized hierarchically.