Automated Tiered Storage Coming to Desktops?

roj3 writes "Tiered storage has been the scourge of administrators because the vendors tell us to hold meetings with all departments and then classify data to storage tier based on its type or relative importance. eWeek has a story about a new approach to tiered storage — sorting it all by usage patterns. Regularly used data goes on high-performance storage, idle data goes on slower/cheaper storage. Volumes and files even span several types of drives or RAID levels. Is automated tiered storage headed to desktops?"

Comments

Networks, sure.

[celardore]

I can see the usefulness of this technology over a busy network with multiple users and masses of files and storage... I just can't see needing anything more than a mirror&stripe RAID array on a PC with only one user. Even that could be considered excessive.

Re:Networks, sure.

[0racle]

That only makes sense if the people in the household wish to learn how to use what you've mentioned. Since current evidence points to the fact that most people look at computers as a magical box that can not be understood, the chances of them learning how to do a fraction of what you suggest is about as likely as you winning the lottery.

The XP file sharing wizard is too much for a lot of people and you think a raid array sharing up OS images over a network via PXE makes sense?

Re:Networks, sure.

[jwjcmw]

"Life is changing to the digital a bit more evey day. And just as we have cardboard boxes in our attic holding the things we dont use, file cabinets in our office alphabetized, firesafes for important documents, and Safe Deposit boxes for wills. The average home user will need to know and use the digital equivalents."

Or, if you are like many people, you have documents on your desk and in piles on the floor that you will never use, your kids birth certificate is in a stack of papers from when you had to take it to school for registration, your file cabinets have partially labeled folders that are in chronological order...as in the order that you stuffed them in the filing cabinet, your will is in the "to be filed" folder in the bottom of said filing cabinet and you could fill the bathtub with your old phone and electric bills.

Hopefully the digital equivalents will be better for the organizationally challenged.

Great Idea

[Jazz-Masta]

This is exactly what everyone is looking for. People defrag their hard drives in the hopes to increase performance. There is no reason why storage that is accessed more shouldn't be on the high performance drives. Or at least some sort of class rating that defines what storage may need high performance. For example, automatically installing and saving 3D Max to a RAID 0 media, and saving word documents to the lesser-performing drives.

I try to follow this idea all the time with my system. Fast stuff goes on RAID 0, slow stuff, and backup stuff goes on the ole' 200 GB backup drive.

Oh....good..

[JerBear0]

"idle data goes on slower/cheaper storage"

So that special little something that you need once a year, but when you need it, you need it RIGHT NOW is tied to the foot of a pigeon fluttering around the warehouse somewhere. Frequency of use does NOT denote importance.

Just read TFA:

[Ant P.]

$50k for a 6TB fileserver? What's that extra $40000 paying for that a normal fileserver loaded with RAM can't do just as fast?

Re:No but it is correlated

[cperciva]

Yes, there are exceptional cases, like the President's access to the Nuclear Briefcase. It hasn't been used for real in a long time if ever but when he needs it it had better be close at hand.

Oddly enough, I think most people in the world would prefer that it wasn't close at hand when Bush decides he wants it.

A better example is fire extinguishers -- most of them will literally never be used, but there's a very good reason to ensure that they are readily available.