By K.C.Bishoppe
As data reserves grow, the need for storage grows simultaneously.
Storage administrators always move data between tiers by manually initiating the process or classifying their data and creating tiering policies.
Now, numerous automation products are designed to reduce or eliminate the need for staffers to monitor storage systems and find specific blocks, files or volumes that need to be retiered and manually moved.
The newest automation tools still require some policy creation. Necessary considerations in choosing an automated tool are which criteria the software can consider, whether it can evaluate and move individual blocks or files, how quickly the software can detect and react to change, and whether the administrators can override the automated tiering if it interferes with application performance.
Of course, there's also the psychological consideration of how comfortable administrators feel in turning over control to an automated tool.
Some companies claim to be recognizing significant benefits with the automated software currently available. Moving less utilized data to slower, less expensive storage can reduce hardware costs. Putting the most frequently accessed and most important data on more expensive, faster drives can boost performance.
Automation of the entire process prevents it getting bogged down in the data classification and policy-setting that hampered earlier "tiering" efforts like Information Life-cycle Management (ILM).
However, automation isn't effort free. The automated data tiering software requires upfront effort classifying data and setting policies regarding the determination of the movement of certain types of data.
Automated tiering is still immature and as it matures it may well help to drive the tuning of the highest performance for storage medium and thus resp the maximum benefit.
Pricing for automated-tiering software varies based on the abilities of the software while vendors like EMC and Compellant strive to make the software more "application-aware", standards viable and subsequently more expensive.
