Sources

Sources Used

Amelang, Mark. "ILM, tiered storage and active archive form a powerful trio." World Oil 226.11 (2005): 63-4. OmniFile Full Text Mega. Web. 4 May 2010.

Collett, Stacy. (2010). "2015: Who Will Run the Data Store." Computer World, 44, 28-30

Crump, George. (2010). "SSD or Automated Tiering?" http://www.storage-switzerland.com/Articles/Entries/2010/4/6_SSD_or_Automated_Tiering.html

Scheier, Robert L. (2010). "Automating the Data Store." Computer World, 44, 23-26.

Soran, Phillip. (2010). Compellent Website. http://www.compellent.com/

FAST- Fully Automated Storage Tiering

Final Verdict: Should We Adopt Automated Data Tiering

Here are the reasons why I think it would be wise for any organization to use ADT

Cost Efficient-

• "Most active blocks of data reside on high performance SSD or Fibre Channel drives while less active blocks of data automatically move to lower-cost, high- capacity SAS or SATA drives" (Compellent, 2010).
• The technology allows data to be moved automatically between tiers of storage without the manual labor of storage administrators. Without storage administrators organizations can save money by not having to pay their salaries. (Collett, 2010).

High Performance-

• "Putting the most frequently accessed or most important data on faster, more expensive Fibre Channel drives or even solid-state drives (SSD) boosts performance" (Scheier, 2010).
• With 50-60 percent annual compound growth rate of data storage the system is more likely to become bogged down and operate slower. An automated data tiering system would make sure the system operates at full capacity (Mearian, 2009).

More Competitive

• If other organizations decide to upgrade to ADT we would be less competitive as them because our organization would be wasting time and money on manually monitoring the data storage and moving it around. Without upgrading, our organization could fall behind and eventually go out of business.
• Even though automated data tiering is broad it will help to take care of the everyday data storage and if we use it today we will be sure to be ahead of the curve when it comes to data storage (Crump, 2010).

Vendors Who Provide Some Type of Automated Tiering

Compellent

http://www.compellent.com/Products/Software/Automated-Tiered-Storage.aspx

Avere Systems

http://www.averesystems.com/

3Par

http://www.3par.com/index.html

F5 Networks Inc.

http://www.f5.com/

Problems and Ethical Issues with ADT

Although I have only touched on the positive points of organizations expanding to Automated Data Tiering, there are also some complications and ethical issues with this subject. In our economy today, no one can afford to lose their job, especially if it is not being taken over by a human but by a computer operating system. In an automated system such as ADT there is an entire field of employees who are no longer needed and they are the storage administrators. In the ComputerWorld article "2015: Who Will Run the Data Store?" Stacy Collett researches the question and title of the article. Right now there are many time consuming tasks that storage administrators deal with and companies pay for this financially and in time consumed as well, if it were all animated, there would be less reliance on storage administrators (Collett, 2010). An article that I have been relying on for most of my blog is the Scheier article in ComputerWorld ("Automating the Data Store") and he also gives some problems with ADT. With the developments so far the ADT system cannot handle large complex tasks. Also, few vendors offer the technology and it has yet to be proved in transaction-intensive environments where there is much more information and classifying becomes more complex (Scheier, 2010). As of now Automated Data Tiering is only effective for simple tasks which makes it useless for certain tasks. The age-old question can be asked again "just because we have the technology, should we implement it?" In this current economy, it might not be such a wise idea to take away the jobs of thousands of people and create more competition in the open job market.

Information Life-Cycle Management Flow Chart

This is a flow chart of the ILM that shows how data is sifted through and stored in the correct place. This of course requires human interaction where as in automated data tiering it is a fully automatic system.




http://www.openfind.com.tw/english/images/product/mb_flow.jpg

Prior to ADT

Before ADT there were strides made towards and automated data tiering system which really took off with information life-cycle management or (ILC). I found a peer-reviewed academic article that described what ILC was and how it worked. "ILM, Tiered Storage, and Active Archive" by Mark Amelang describes ILM and how with other methods of data storage it can be effective. It focuses on the gas and oil industry which requires a massive amount of data storage that needs to be sifted through and categorized into different places throughout the data storage library. Amelang describes ILM by stating it "utilizes policy management, information management software and tiered storage to seamlessly identify, classify and move data throughout the enterprise to support business initiatives" (Amelang, 2005). It is a cost effective strategy to access, store, and manage information based on its current value to the company (Amelang, 2005). Automated Data Tiering can be considered the advancement of ILC because it is fully automated and does not require a storage administrator. In the Computer World article "Automating the Data Store" by Robert L. Scheier, the author explains that by automating the entire process we prevent the system from getting bogged down in the data classification and policy-setting that is faced in ILM (Scheier, 2010). By building on ILM and making the system fully automatic like it is in ADT (Automatic Data Tiering), companies will experience even more time saved and even more cost reductions.

Automated Data Tiering

This photo shows the different types of data storage centers and the amount of volume that each can hold.

http://www.3par.com/products/technologies/autonomic_tiering.html

What is Automated Data Tiering?

Automated data tiering creates an "auto-pilot" system for the movement of data and monitoring how the data is being used and determining which data should be on what type of storage (Scheier, 2010). It has the chance to revolutionize the way companies store certain data and can save the company a lot of time and money. This type of technology is perfect for organizations with simple needs because the complexities are not completely worked out. The process of tiering itself is described as moving data among different types of storage media as it is needed (Scheier, 2010). There is so much data in today's systems that is not needed anymore and it is just taking up space on expensive Fibre Channel disks. With automated data tiering, the system will automatically determine which data is not being used and move it to a space where it takes up less space. If it is irrelevant the system will delete it itself which will free up space for the new data that is constantly being entered into the system. The old data is transferred to older less expensive data storage like SATA drives while the most frequently accessed data can be stored on the high performing Fibre Channel drives (Scheier, 2010). Before the development of automated data tiering most companies would just hire storage administrators to manually move data between tiers which costs time and money. Automated Data Tiering is a new information technology that can give companies an edge amongst their competitors.