Fast Guide: Tiered storage

Tiered storage basics

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• Definition of tiered storage
  Tiered storage is the assignment of different categories of data to different types of storage media in order to reduce total storage cost.


• Definition of ILM
  Information life cycle management (ILM) is a comprehensive approach to managing the flow of an information system's data and associated metadata from creation and initial storage to the time when it becomes obsolete and is deleted.


• Tiered storage has arrived
  Storage managers are continuing down the paths they indicated last March, if a little more cautiously, and those paths are leading toward a tiered environment.


• Data classification: Getting started
  How data classification can lead to higher service levels, a better working relationship with the business units that create and own the data, and the ability to reduce costs by storing data on an appropriate.


• Storage Management Survival School Lesson Five, The Next Wave: Tiered Storage
  Lesson five of "Storage Management Survival School" examines the steps you should consider in designing a tiered storage model, what the pitfalls are and the benefits of this methodology.


• What is a storage group?
  A storage group can refer to many different things and is used by different vendors to mean various functions.

Tiered storage methodologies

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• Tiered storage options
  If you use a combination of Fibre Channel (FC) and FATA drives is the configuration one tier?


• How can I set up a cost-effective tiered storage strategy?
  A tiered storage strategy, properly planned and executed, can increase service levels for your critical applications and data sets, while reducing the overall cost of data storage.


• Rethinking tiered storage from Storage Decisions
  Creating tiers of storage solutions has quickly become the industry's answer to ever-increasing costs and data volume.


• Tiered Storage School - Lesson 4: Justifying your Tiered Storage Strategy to Management
  Now that you have designed a tiered storage strategy that matches the needs of your business, how do you justify it to your senior management?

How to get started/implementation issues

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• Integration
  Tiered storage is a hot idea, but implementing it can be trickier than appears. This article defines the two different approaches -- heterogeneous and homogeneous -- and helps you choose the strategy you should employ.


• Tiered storage school, Lesson 1: The right storage at the right cost
  Most businesses today are faced with high growth in the amount of data they have to store, but IT budgets are flat or being reduced.


• Tiered Storage School - Lesson 3: Designing a Tiered Storage Architecture
  A properly defined storage architecture will give you the ability to justify spending levels for your existing catalog and future provisioning.

Technologies

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• Prime time for secondary storage
  By definition, the word "secondary" suggests some degree of inferiority, but in a storage area network (SAN), secondary storage can bring big savings and smoother operations.


• Troubleshooting your SAN (more or less) painlessly
  This tip offers a number of suggestions on how to solve the most common SAN problems: Connectivity and performance.


• Two routes to tiered storage
  Internally tiered storage -- a shelf of low-cost disk in an otherwise expensive storage system -- is all the rage with storage buyers.


• Chart a course for consolidation
  Consolidation will be on most IT project lists this year and for good reason. The benefits of consolidation are easy to delineate, and the savings can be substantial.


• Strategic Storage: Storage virtualization -- Is it soup yet?
  Stop us if you've heard this before: Storage virtualization technology could be the hot technology of 2002. No, wait -- 2006.


• Engineering & Architecture: Tiered storage options
  This session focuses on the practical application of tiered storage concepts. We will discuss the case for tiered storage and two common methods of implementing the concept.


• Tiered Storage School: Data classification for tiered storage
  Join Mike Casey and Greg Forest for a webcast on data classification. This lesson covers the strategy behind classification, real-world examples of data classification and the process of discovery


• Tiered storage infrastructures over distance: a.k.a. Extended storage networks
  You have heard the terms WAN, MAN, LAN and SAN along with tiered storage, ILM, SAS and SATA, among others. Learn how to leverage and align these and other storage access technologies to work for you to meet your specific needs.


• Implement Low-Cost Tiered Storage Using Enterprise ATA
  Enterprises need low-cost tiers of storage that are easy to manage and quick to deploy. The Taneja Group and Candera will discuss how Enterprise ATA is now the best choice for tiered storage.

Cost savings

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• Tiered storage with SATA
  Simply deploying low-cost storage doesn't always equal savings. Learn to calculate total cost of ownership (TCO) when planning tiered-storage system using lower-cost disk and save money.


• Save money with tiered storage
  The price differences between the classes of storage are becoming extreme. For example as of this year, you could pay more than $120 per gigabyte for high-speed, high-reliability storage systems, or you could pay less than $7 per gigabyte for a low-speed, less reliable solution using ATA disks.


• Cost savings lure users to tiered storage
  Many companies are finding cost savings and improved data management with a tiered storage approach. But before purchasing those midrange arrays, you'd better prioritize your data and study up on vendor interoperability, said users.


• Tiered storage and disk backup budgeted for '05
  Although the balmy days of IT spending are clearly a thing of the past, it looks as though the corporate inner Scrooge has loosened the purse strings a little when it comes to storage.


• Strategic Storage: Six ways to spend less for enterprise storage
  Storage budgets might finally be showing signs of positive growth, but that doesn't mean the free-spending days are back.


• IT industry outlook: Salaries, RFID and tiered storage on the rise?
  It wasn't a great year, but 2004 saw the bruised and bloodied tech industry struggle to its feet and begin to fight again.

Tiered storage management

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• Strategic Storage: Five storage management musts
  One thing's for sure about enterprise storage these days -- it's not getting any simpler. Storage managers must deal with constant data growth, as well as burgeoning corporate interest in keeping closer track of just what data lies where.


• Managing tiered storage a pain in the neck
  Tiered storage promises all kinds of goodies, not least of all a way to take advantage of lower cost disk while paving the way to some type of data lifecycle management process. So far, however, it's failing to deliver on this promise.


• Restructuring backup for tiered storage
  Craig D. Taylor discusses one practical tiered architecture approach, storage risk assessment, MAID and ATA storage offerings.


• A Blueprint for Tiered Storage
  Steve Duplessie, Senior Analyst for the Enterprise Storage Group, provides a blueprint for building a tiered storage strategy within your environment.

Tiered storage adopters

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• Weather Channel improves forecast with tiered storage
  Faced with rapid data growth and the pressure to produce 24-hour weather information, The Weather Channel has implemented a three-tier storage model and switched to cheaper servers running Linux.


• Strategic Storage: Smart planning moves many to tiers
  Some enterprises already have shifted nonessential data to secondary tiers of storage, freeing primary storage resources for high-value applications. Perhaps you're pondering the same strategy.


• Tiered storage has digital music provider singing new tune
  Everybody loves music -- especially when it's delivered to you as a digital file. No one's feeling the love more these days than Loudeye Corp., a provider of digital media to customers such as Amazon.com, Apple iTunes and Virgin.

Additional resources

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• Storage topic: Tiered storage
  News, expert advice and reference guides to Tiered storage.


• Strategic Storage: Backup starts to inch forward
  Corporate backup strategies are the elephant in the living room that many storage managers don't like to acknowledge. They know it's a problem and that backups fail with alarming regularity.


• Storage Management School Lesson 5: Tiered storage, the next wave
  The concept of tiered storage is to re-engineer how storage is deployed and managed in easily classified tiers that have different characteristics to meet varying application and line of business needs.


• SD '04: Users list storage priorities
  Tiered storage, disaster recovery and reducing the number of suppliers to deal with were the top concerns for many users at Storage Decisions.


• Tiered Storage School - Lesson 2: Aligning Your Business with Storage Tiers
  The key to a successful tiered storage strategy is defining the requirements of your business data.


• Fast Guide: Storage Management
  Managing your storage infrastructure has never been harder. Complex systems, unbelievable data growth rates and squabbling vendors are just a few of the issues hampering your ability to manage storage.

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