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Ok, given the changes to the storage arena I’ve been working on a revised “Tiering system” to incorporate all of the levels of data…importance?

My version of Storage Tiering is (or should be) as follows:

• Tier-1    – Symmetrix/Replicated – High Performance/Criticial Data
• Tier-2    – Symmetrix/NonReplicated – High Performance/Non-Criticial Data
• Tier-3   – Symmetrix/SATA/Replicated – High-Medium Performance/Critical Data
• Tier-4   – Symmetrix/SATA/NonReplicated – High-Medium Performance/Non-Critical Data
• Tier-5    – Clariion/FC/Replicated – Medium Performance/Critical Data
• Tier-6    – Clariion/FC/NonReplicated – Medium Performance/Non-Critical Data
• Tier-7    – Clariion/SATA/Replicated – Low Performance/Critical Data
• Tier-8    – Clariion/SATA/NonReplicated – Low Performance/Non-Critical Data
• Tier-9    – CelerraNAS/Replicated – Network Attached/Critical Data
• Tier-10  – CelerraNAS/NonReplicated – Network Attached/Non-Criticial Data
• Tier-11  – Atmos – Network Attached / Low Performance
• Tier-12  – Centerra (Content Addressable Storage) – Low Performance Archive / Highly Available
• Tier-13  – Primary Tape-In-Library (Automatic loading on demand via HSM)
• Tier-14  – Primary Tape-Out-Of-Library (Manual Intervention Required)

“Critical Data” vs. “Non-Critical Data” is simply a matter of how long you can be without the data should a failure or accidental deletion occur.  As all data is available in Tier8/9 storage (in theory).

I’ve also considered using Tier1/Tier1B to describe DMX storage vs. Clariion storage, given that there is a LOT of overlap in performance characteristics these days…

Oh, and iSCSI would be somewhere between 10 and 13….

Any thoughts?

We just had our sales presentation on EMC’s Centerra Content Addressable Storage system.  I have to admit, I went into it knowing a little about it, and even the 60,000 foot “executive summary” EMC put together really impressed me.

The idea of putting so much data to tape but keeping it up and available just floors me.  But for a “reasonable” price, I can offload all of our imaging (we don’t use paper records) voice recordings for the call center, and email traffic to a system that is widely considered to be so bulletproof (when in a multi-location DR environment) that it doesn’t require backups.

By doing object-level mirroring it seems like they’ve really conquered the need for backups, as well as the management nightmare that is records retention.   Since the objects can be mirrored within the frame, as well as to a remote frame, that makes it even more solid.

I have to say I’m impressed – now to sell it to the Execs…..  (Actually our CEO is so “compliance driven” it may not be much of a hard sell)

The boys over at Symantec (www.symantec.com) just came by last week and gave us an interesting presentation on Enterprise Vault.  (Not to be confused with the Vault extension for NetBackup, which is a different beast)

The short answer is this.  EV is an application that dives into your exchange environment and strips out any email/attachments over (x) days old.  It then creates an HTML view copy of it and stores the original out of the Exchange information store in Tier-2 storage.  Then, after an even longer period, say a couple of years or so, you can even stage it from Tier-2 (say slow disks like Clariion ATA) to Tier-3 (Tape) storage.

The cool part is, that there is a header file that stays in the user’s email that shows that it’s a vaulted email.  If they double click to open it like the would a normal email, it figures out where it is, and if it’s in Tier-2 storage it brings it up, if it’s in Tier-3 storage, it sends a tape request to the appropriate person so the tape can be recalled from off-site storage and restored.

For companies that have to retain data for 20+ years, how bloated can an email infrastructure get?  I’ve got 90G in my information store after the first year, and it’s only going to get worse from this point on.

Though I’ll bet EMC is frothing at the mouth at the idea.