storagesummit

Tiered Storage
Storage experts discuss the pros & cons of Tiered Storage.
   10 years ago
#StorageSummitHybrid Storage ArraysStorage experts discuss the pros & cons of hybrid storage arrays. Are they the best of both worlds?
Oracle Hardware
Seeing a lot of discussion below on cloud - what about archiving to the cloud vs on-premise infrastructure and management?
Bert Latamore
Is cloud storage a simpler and cheaper solution to on-premise offerings?
Kerstin Woods
Many customers I talk to concerned about sensitive data living outside of their direct sphere of control. Not worth the risk.
Jeff Frick
-> Or managing Hybrid where workloads / data may migrate back and forth based on changing project criteria
Chris Ilg
Got to watch out for hidden costs with cloud archiving. Prices may change/escalate over time, switching costs may be prohibitive, downtime costs (outages do happen, maybe more often in public clouds than on-prem solutions),
Hans De Leenheer
@KerstinWoods not worth the risk - for everyone - is the right note her to make. for most environments off-site, public/shared cloud archiving is a good economic decision
Chris Ilg
Security, security, security!
Hans De Leenheer
@KerstinWoods however! you are always responsible yourself even if the provider messes up. therefor multiple platforms should be used
cmosoares
Usually the gotcha is in the retrieval costs. Free to ingest, but watch out when you need your data back.
Hans De Leenheer
all point about cost are valid, until you compare those costs to the cost of an extra datacenter location
cmosoares
Agreed. If you need to build a new data center all bets are off.
Oracle Hardware
Customers like T3 Media use tape in a cloud model for cost-effectiveness: http://link.brightco...
T3Media Invests in Oracle's StorageTek Tape
T3Media utilizes Oracle tape technologies including Oracle's Sun Storage Archive Manager, to simplify management. Oracle’s StorageTek T10K tape and drives deliver high capacity and high performance, and help reduce costs.
Jeff Frick
@Chris_IIg -> In your opinion, how far are they on the security journey 5% 20% 50%?
Hans De Leenheer
but on-topic referring to tiering: I like the idea of (public) cloud storage as a tier. Look at StoreSimple, Avere, ...
Chris Ilg
Yes, including public cloud as a tier is the right direction, but still need to address security concerns, which of cours, never be completely satisfied. So which data goes to cloud tier is important consideration
Bert Latamore
@cmosoares Shifting from disk to flash can cut footprint, power and cooling and with the drop in flash prices could be a much less expensive option than building a new data center.
cmosoares
Is it a sustainable business model? Can anyone beyond Amazon survive?
Hans De Leenheer
@cmosoares yes! Amazon is just one of the business models that works.
cmosoares
Other vendors have flamed out -- Norvanix for one. Others been acquired.
Hans De Leenheer
@cmosoares I didn't say everyone will survive - I said Amazon will not be the only one
Kerstin Woods
@cmosoares It's a good point - you need to be careful to whom you entrust your data.
cmosoares
WIll Box, Dropbox make it despite enormous cash infusions
Jeff Frick
-> Sure they'd argue its just another variant of outsourcing non-core to foucs on competitive differential? (not data center management) . ADP on steroids.
Strategy vs successful execution, two very different things.
Jeff Frick
Won't security always be a journey, not a destination?
Oracle Hardware
Let's dive right in to set the stage - how do you define "tiered storage"?
Chris Ilg
Depends on applications and use cases in effect. Could be perf. disk and capacity optimized disk in a single subsytem or could be independent hardware tiers, i.e. flash, spinning disk, tape
Chris Ilg
Managed by an HSM or archive manager software
Chris Ilg
The latter, that is
Kerstin Woods
I think it's about aligning data to the best storage so that you optimize performance, capacity and cost simultaneously
Hans De Leenheer
he who still needs to explain tiered-storage should not be in a storage discussion :)
Oracle Hardware
Can you please define HSM?
Stuart Miniman
Tiering started with different speeds of disks - has flash made a dramatic change in how the technology is used?
cmosoares
Also, we should discuss issues such as long term data retention for compliance, archiving or BI/BA purposes. as well as how to manage tiered storage.
Chris Ilg
Not in a long term retention, i.e. archiving environment. Flash has less value here.
Terry Nims
i think of tiered storage as aligning different capabilities to different sets of data to optimize cost.
Jeff Frick
@KerstinWoods -> tough to optimize all three legs of that stool.
Chris Ilg
But a great HSM with robust policies might do the trick
Kerstin Woods
The key here is that not all data is equal yet so often we end up treating it all the same - putting it all on the same storage systems - such a waste!
Kerstin Woods
@JeffFrick But that's the beauty of tiered storage :)
Jeff Frick
-> Does the media demand bifurcate? Flash (speed) and Tape (cost). Not much left for spinning disc in the middle
Hans De Leenheer
there are 2 types of storage tiering: the first one is multiple capabilities in a single platform/system. This could be that 1 file/volume resides on one of the tiers 1/2
cmosoares
How about matching the economic value of data to storage device? High-value, high access demand to fast spinning disk or flash, lower value to SATA; dormant to tape?
Jeff Frick
@KerstinWoods -> like designing an airplane, constant tradeoffs until you get an optimal solution for the objective at hand.
Hans De Leenheer
the second type is where a single file/volume is automatically distributed over different storage types
Chris Ilg
HSM = Heirarchical Storage Management. Been around for a long time. Also, sometimes referred to as ILM. But there are probably some distinctions between HSM and ILM that not everyone is aware of or agrees to
Terry Nims
i see flash generally used to avoid tiering.
Hans De Leenheer
but tiering as such has nothing to to with archiving. maybe about retention but not archiving.
Chris Ilg
Let's say about the storage infrastructure behind archiving
Kerstin Woods
Flash instead of tiering - Wow - that's an awfully expensive solution for a lot of inactive data.
Hans De Leenheer
no, archiving as such is the act of removing data from a production location
Chris Ilg
Archiving includes search, content awareness, compliance and deletion/scrape policies
Chris Ilg
tiered storage does not necessarily define or help with any of the above
Chris Ilg
Yes, removing from production environment, but still may be the primary copy of the data
Hans De Leenheer
if you are removing data from production and it's the only copy, you got to fire your data architects :)
Chris Ilg
In other words, its not necessarily data protection, though archiving may include BC/DR capabilities to support the archive
Chris Ilg
A good archive manager will manage multiple copies of the file across multiple tiers of storage.
Chris Ilg
Automatically based on established policies, of course.
Chris Ilg
This actually can reduce dramatically both production storage requirements and data protection (secondary storage) requirements. A lot of people don't recognize these added benefits of archiving less active data from production
Dave Vellante
"Performance Disk" is becoming an oxymoron - if it spins it's slow