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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?"
I was using systems that did this 10 years ago. Granted, back then it was disk+tape not different speed disks, but it's the exact same thing.
Looks to me like an excuse to charge 8-10x what you should be paying for storage of that size.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
I think we'll actually see the opposite:
With multiple PCs per household, it makes sense to get rid of the hard drives at the PC level and put them in a RAID enclose that is secured into a wall.
This, however, is a threat to Microsoft because you'll be able to PXE-boot any image of your choice (just think that perhaps your employer or bank supplies their own secure image in order to connect to their resources). Someone needs to get Windows to PXE boot at the hardware level (emulate IDE or something).
This will be huge but we've got to squeeze Microsoft into it, first. Then, everyone will be free to try linux and see what we've all been jabbering about.
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Apples and pomegranates you compare;
Channels of Fiber come not cheap.
Terabytes 6 with connection of light for less than $50k you will not find.
Terabytes 6 with connections of wire you may.
SATA drives, untested are delivered.
SATA drives with fewer bearings.
SATA drives with short life.
Enterprise storage is not easy.
Also, I want this functionality on all operating systems. Unless I explicitly request deletion, no file should ever be unlinked, deleted, or whatever you call it when I delete it, whether through the command line or the GUI.
The problem with this is, is that it causes a significant reduction in performance.
Ideally, the operating system chose the best possible spot for that file when it got written. Once that file is deleted, that spot will once again be the fastest best possible spot- for at least something. If the operating system skips that spot for a new file, then this new file isn't going to be accessed quite as quickly.
Truly automatic tiered storage solves this problem by splitting the directory services from the storage system- that is, the file's _name_ is no longer tied to the volume that the file happens to live on (and no, this isn't the same thing as symlinks or shortcuts). This allows the decision as to what the best spot for a file is to be deferred until later- and even spanned across multiple volumes!
Unfortunately, such a beast is very difficult- if we make a reduction in our requirements- say that performance isn't very important- or perhaps that we can stop using our computer for a few hours each evening, then it's probably possible. What we need is a new kind of file system that supports either atomic moves between disks, or a filesystem that splits the names from the storage.
A few research projects have been focused on these kinds of changes- but they all tend to break UNIX semantics (Amoeba immediately springs to mind)- and those UNIX semantics are, in-fact, the most widely used and recognized semantics for filesystems anywhere (Even Windows uses them!)-- people who develop a filesystem incapable of supporting them, really need to have a real good reason for breaking everyone's hard work.
While they often do, it hasn't yet been seen as good enough for general purpose stuff.