Using the Cloud for Storage Tiering
The need for Tiered Storage
With a variety of data storage devices available today, ranging from high-performance SSD to low-cost SATA arrays, a seamless way to automatically tier data across them can maximize utilization and cost-efficiency. A cost-effective auto-tiering strategy also eliminates the need to orchestrate cumbersome and/or disruptive migrations of existing data.
Using the Cloud as a Storage Tier
With the introduction of cloud as a part of a storage virtualization strategy, there is no longer a need to deploy dedicated off-site infrastructure to move data backups off-premise for disaster recovery. Petabytes of thin-provisioned cloud storage can be added to the infrastructure, all with CloudArray’s robust enterprise-class cloud storage gateway feature set, including dynamic caching, data reduction, at-rest local key encryption and bandwidth optimization. Augmenting or even replacing an off-site tape strategy is simpler than ever.
Using Storage Virtualization to Auto-Tier in the Cloud
Today's state of the art tiered storage integrates cloud storage for low-cost data archival. Storage virtualization solutions like DataCore SANsymphony-V, integrated with the CloudArray cloud storage gateway make it easy for companies to centrally define and manage a cloud-enabled tiered storage environment.
DataCore’s SANsymphony-V, the industry’s first storage hypervisor, is an innovative software solution that has enabled thousands of VMware and Hyper-V customers to successfully eliminate the storage-related costs and complexity associated with virtualization by improving hardware utilization and increasing operational efficiency in virtualized environments. Extending storage virtualization to the cloud via CloudArray enables the compelling features of storage virtualization on local storage to apply across multiple cloud storage providers. Concerned about cloud reliability? Just select RAID or mirroring across a choice of cloud storage providers and increase reliability dramatically. Want to replicate data in an existing storage array to the cloud? It’s now a simple process — no data to migrate, no APIs, no vendor lock-in and the broadest choice of cloud providers.
"Open Market" Storage Tiering
Available in both virtual and physical appliance configurations, the TwinStrata CloudArray cloud storage gateway extends the cost-saving value propostion to a broad and impressive selection of public and private cloud storage providers. This allows companies to mix and match or migrate between different cloud storage providers to optimize cost and service level agreements for their cloud archives. Thus, CloudArray customers achieve true ‘open market’ buying power across their portfolio of storage investments.
The Bottom Line
Terri McClure from Enterprise Strategy Group may have summed it up best, saying that combining storage virtualization with CloudArray “gives companies greater control over storage performance and helps control costs by making it easy to tier their storage across the absolute widest range of resources, from high-performance SSD arrays and legacy disk arrays, to scalable, cost-effective cloud storage.”