EMC launches long-awaited storage tiering tech

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EMC has brought its latest storage technology to market claiming it will revolutionise the way storage is managed.

The company has been talking about the release of FAST, or fully automated storage tiering, for quite some time, but version one is now hitting the shelves.

The key to the new technology is to automatically place data onto different storage tiers depending on its usage. The higher the tier, the more expensive the cost to store it there, so for a relatively untouched piece of data it would make little sense to keep it high up.

FAST aims to move that data to a lower tier of storage, arrange regularly accessed data to move to the top and fit all the layers in-between depending on your infrastructure.

Rich Napolitano, senior vice president and general manager of EMC’s Unified Storage Group, said in a statement: “Managing the explosive growth in file, unstructured and object-based data is a major challenge. Doing it without meaningful automation and policy management is nearly impossible.”

“EMC’s FAST technology allows customers to move and tier this data within a system, across system types, or into the cloud. This not only provides a range of new archive approaches, it also dramatically simplifies the management of unstructured data at scale.”

The company claimed that a combination of FAST, enterprise flash drives for active data and SATA disk drives for the less active can cut costs of storage acquisition by at least 20 per cent and reduce operational costs by 40 per cent.

Tom Gregory, senior systems engineer at Raymond James Financial, has been using the technology at his firm and said in a statement: “Storage tiering has traditionally been a manual, resource-intensive process. With automated tiering, we can apply consistent policies across the enterprise in order to place application data on the appropriate media.”

“In implementing flash technology, we’re looking for any advantage that enhances our ability to place only the most intense workloads on that tier. FAST technology will ensure that our flash drives are servicing the workload for which they are suited.”

This first phase of FAST technology is available immediately on the company’s Symmetrix V-Max and CLARiiON CX4 networked storage systems as well as the Celerra NS unified storage systems.

EMC confirmed that further phases would be rolling out during 2010.

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