Veritas Storage Foundation Intelligent Storage Provisioning 5.0 Solutions Guide, HP-UX 11i v3, First Edition, May 2008

20 Tiered storage solutions
Policies for storage tiers
The maximum benefit to business, in terms of efficiency and cost savings, is
achieved when QoSS decisions are based on the proper classification of storage.
When an enterprise analyzes its data storage patterns, often as much as 75
percent of data that is residing on premium storage may be found to be eligible
for movement to a lower tier.
To make the best use of tiered storage, the Veritas Storage Foundation Web GUI
provides a mechanism that allows you to manage data at the file level. The
movement of files between tiers is performed automatically according to
predefined policies. Unlike those Hierarchical Storage Management (HSM)
solutions that use the data management API (DMAPI), this does not incur a
‘‘time-to-first-byte’’ latency overhead when users or applications access
relocated files that have been moved to secondary storage.
The Veritas Storage Foundation software allows you to define and update
policies throughout the network rather than on a host-by-host basis, and also
simplifies the process of moving data between storage tiers.
Policies for storage tiers
Storage tier policies determine where every piece of data is stored based on the
business needs of the enterprise and taking into account factors such as:
■ The value of the data to the business
■ The need for access to the data
■ The cost and ease of accessing each storage resource
Storage tier policies allow the movement of data between storage tiers to be
automated when certain criteria are met. For example, you can write a policy to
move customer records that are older than 30 days from high-cost, high-
performance storage to lower-cost, lower-performance storage.
Using Veritas Storage Foundation Web GUI, you can define and implement
policies throughout the network from a central console.
Low High
Archive data, such as historical customer and account
records, which needs to be accessible but is not used heavily.
These files are stored in mid-range to low-end storage arrays
with fast, reliable network connections.
Low Low
Data that has little impact on an enterprise’s business. These
files are stored on low-cost media, such as tape, with little
consideration given to performance.
Cost Benefit Application