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  5. Automatic Tiering - It Isn't HSM/ILM 2.0: Page 2 of 2
Data Centers

Automatic Tiering - It Isn't HSM/ILM 2.0: Page 2 of 2

Ever since NetApp's Tom Georgens said "I think the entire concept of tiering is dying" in an analyst call last month, the blogosphere has been all a-twitter about automated storage tiering, I mean George Crump alone got three blog entries out of it. Unfortunately, many of those writing about automated tiering are thinking about storage as strictly unstructured file data, arguing that better file management with an ILM-like solution would be a better idea. In array tiering, is the cost/performanc
Howard Marks
March 19, 2010

Given that Microsoft has re-engineered Exchange to generate fewer IOPS in 2007 and again in Exchange 2010, we could probably run Exchange across wide-striped SATA drives. The Oracle or SQL server that runs our ERP system is another story. That database contains the details of every order filled in the last two years, and we were lucky to talk them into letting us archive the five year old data. It also has indexes and tables that generate tens of thousands of IOPS.  A good DBA could, at least with Oracle, separate the table spaces and run scripts to move old data to slower disks periodically leaving the hotter 40 percent of the data base on short stroked drives. Of course, he or she would have to run the scripts and re-assess periodically.

With automated tiering, the disk array could identify the hottest 10 percent of the database for SSDs, put the next 20 percent on 300GB FC disks (off of 40GB net 73GB short stroked drives) and the 70 percent of older data on SATA. It can re-balance daily, without needing detailed knowledge of the database schema and application.

Now we need to hire fewer really smart DBAs and put the ones we keep to work on database, as opposed to storage tasks. We can also speed the applications like Exchange, the in-house apps written by guys that left the company in 2003 and applications who's vendors don't provide detailed data dictionaries, where our DBAs don't have the information about where the hot data is.

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