Network Allies Blog Automated Storage Tiering Technologies: Moving Data Between Mechanical Disk and Solid State Storage

Advances in NAND flash technology are making solid state storage more attractive by the day. Samsung recently announced production and imminent deployment of NAND flash memory with a 400Mbps transfer rate, which when scaled up, will continue to revolutionize enterprise data storage.Still, there have been knocks on SSD storage, in comparison to mechanical hard drive storage media. In particular, a less than stellar reputation of SSD storage reliability continues to be the biggest impediment when considering life cycles and volatility of data storage. Both storage tiering and improvement in SSD technology are fast making reliability issues a thing of the past, though.Storage tiering optimizes read / write / execute cycles, which in turn improves on the life span of SSD storage devices. That's where tiering technologies come into play. Optimizing the lifecycles of SSD storage has become the end game for enterprises such as ISVs and other high end speed users such as military, medical, industrial control / automation, and communications verticals.Advanced storage tiering technologies take advantage of separating data, and making intelligent decisions regarding data that can be reliably stored on SSDs. Metadata (data about data) is clearly the best candidate for SSD storage, and tiering is designed to make the differentiation between metadata (file information, attributes, permissions, structures, indices, etc.) and, for example, executable data.This is particularly important for companies that have made the decision to move some or all of their data management needs into a virtual environment. Whether hosting the services on their own, or in contracting for these services, understanding the available storage options and optimizing storage tiering for specific applications (think SAP or Oracle ERP) becomes a challenge. Accessing data while minimizing latency issues and improving IOPS via partitioning of data types becomes the end game - and appropriate storage tiering management can increase tiered file system speed and efficiencies significantly (upwards of 300% in some cases).Again, metadata management is where the gold lies in increasing efficiency of data tiering. Optimization of metadata enables significantly better, and transparent, file system performance that outshines more complex tiering schemes for minimal additional investment.Network Allies' Hardware as a Service practice allows us to execute faster and with more flexibility than our competitors when it comes to delivering and optimizing storage tiering solutions. We provided a first-to-market advantage, all while lowering costs and delivering world-class quality. Want to know more? Contact us today for a no-obligation consultation.