Storage AUTO-TIERING Technology
Information has become a major commodity in our daily lives.We are producing massive amounts
of data daily. At UAEU Students, Staff and faculty members take advantage of readily available IT
resources and services to send and receive e-mails, share documents and videos, and use many
other applications.With so much data out there, the need for an efficient and secure solution to
Data Storage becomes extremely important.
With the range of storage devices available these days, the task of choosing the right option can be
challenging.What type of hard drive is best to use: Serial Attached SCSI (SAS for Performance), Near
Line SAS (NL-SAS for Capacity) and solid-state disks (SSD for Extra Performance)? There is a number
of factors to consider when choosing storage technology. These include capacity, random access,
performance, cost, density and reliability.With these requirements in mind, one type of storage
that is highly recommended for storage management efficiency is Automated Storage Tiering.
As the name suggests, AUTOMATED STORAGE TIERING (AST) can simply be described as the storage
of the right data on the right device at the right time to meet space, performance and cost
requirements. Thus, data moves from one level to another based on the frquency of use of data.
The adoption of AST at UAEU has helped the university to optimize the utilization of the storage
systems by reducing the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and increasing performance. How is this
done? The storage administrator assigns a policy that automatically relocates data based on the
frequency of use. In other words, infrequently used data is initially assigned to slower, less-expen-
sive NL-SAS disks. However, as and when its usage frequency increases it is automatically moved to
higher-performing SAS or extra-performing solid-state drives (SSDs) and vice versa.
By Mohammed Makadmeh
17 |
December 2015
UITS Newsletter
