Storage Vendor Trends: Storage Tiering with Automated Data Migration

A number of storage vendors implement storage tiering with automated data migration based upon user-defined policies. As note din this report on Datamation, vendors implement migration in one way or another, and while they differ in subtle ways -- such as the granularity of data being migrated -- they implement the goal of migration with performance and cost in mind.

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"EMC has received a considerable amount of attention since its introduction of FAST, or Fully Automated Storage Tiering. EMC’s target-based solution permits the transparent and policy-driven migration of storage objects between three tiers (representing flash, FC, and SATA). The initial introduction of FAST provides LUN-level migration between tiers, but EMC’s upgraded FAST technology will very soon support sub-LUN level migration (1GB chunks of data). The upgraded FAST (due mid year 2010) also includes what’s called the 'FAST Cache,' which introduces high-performance flash drives to reduce response times."

Read the Full "Data Migration: EMC, Compellent, 3PAR, FalconStor" Story at Datamation