Tiered Storage Offerings

Choosing the right storage for your applications depends on performance, capacity and cost. All data is not equal; therefore, data needs to be allocated on different tiers, with different price points and different data protection service levels. The following tiered storage model is a shared storage infrastructure, designed specifically for servers, not end user’s desktops. File Sharing services (LMS or LCS) with data protection, designed for end user access to keep and share files internally have different fee schedules.

Different service levels of data protection for each storage tier are available for additional fees. Data protection options include replication, mirroring, snapshot and backup to disk, tape, or cloud. Contact IMS for assistance to evaluate data protection service level based on criticality of data and cost to fit availability, restore, backup, and business continuity objectives.

Guidelines

1. Tier 0 is just emerging out of tier 1 storage for extremely high performance, high value information that needs to be presented at the highest possible speed. Application examples includes: Virtual Desktop, High Performance Computing applications, etc.
2. Enterprise tier is the most valuable data to the institution, used in the critical business processes, revenue generating applications.
3. Business tier supports a broad range of major business applications. Choosing Tier 2 is a balance between cost, performance and capacity.
4. Move less business critical applications, Test, and Development to a Tier 2 or 3.
5. File sharing used for shared directories can grow very quickly but has infrequent access patterns. Over 75% of data on file sharing storage has not been accessed in more than a year. Data that isn’t accessed should be on the low cost, high capacity Tier 3.
6. Online content for web servers is infrequently accessed can be kept at Tier 3.

Example of Storage Tiers and Application Mapping