Storage Magazine defines Tiered storage as "...the assignment of different categories of data to different types of storage media in order to reduce total storage cost. Categories may be based on levels of protection needed, performance requirements, frequency of use, and other considerations. Since assigning data to particular media may be an ongoing and complex activity, some vendors provide software for automatically managing the process based on a company-defined policy."
IoDynamix offers the following examples for Tiered Storage:
Tier-1 Primary Storage
- Dell Equallogic PS-3000 SAS ISCSI SAN
Tier-2 Secondary Storage - SAN
- Equallogic PS Series ISCI SAN
- Lefthand Networks IQSAN
Tier-3 Secondary Storage - SATA
- Nexsan SATA RAID Arrays
- Overland REO SATA RAID Arrays
Tier-4 Nearline Storage
- Overland Tape Libraries
- Qualstar Tape Libraries
- Spectralogic Tape Libraries
- Breecehill Tape Libraries
Tier-5 Offline Storage - Archive
- LTO Tape
- AIT Tape
- SDLT Tape
- Removable Disk
