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.