The statistics are overwhelming. Researchers predict that more data will be produced in the next year than has been generated during the entire existence of humankind.

Unfortunately, this onslaught means your company data may be growing out of control, and your staff could be struggling to manage ever-lengthening backup times.

To keep up, you may be like many who regularly add storage capacity to their servers and SANs. But eventually, you may become frustrated with this pricey and cumbersome habit --and the increasingly long backups it requires.

Or, you may seek relief by limiting your data and regularly deleting files -- or forcing your employees to do it themselves. But this habit can be risky and, in regulated industries, illegal.

It may be time for you to stop and consider the long-term cost of your growing data, and perhaps seek out a smarter solution that will help you balance your data growth and storage resources.

Your solution may lie in tiered storage.

What Is Tiered Storage?
Tiered storage is the philosophy of segmenting data, based on its varying business value, in order to control storage costs and simplify data management.

For example, your company may decide to use Fibre Channel SANs for its tier-one, mission-critical data. Tier-two data, such as financial or classified files, might shift to lower-cost disks (e.g., SCSI drives). And tier-three might contain compliance data or rarely used files, stored on Serial ATA (SATA) drives before archiving them on tape.
These lower tiers of disks (e.g., SATA) not only store large amounts of data, they typically offer a faster transfer time than offloading the same amount of data directly from hard disk to tape. Thus, you would accelerate the backup process and save time.  What's more, tiered storage is not a single solution -- but rather a strategy that can be adopted by even the smallest businesses.

Fortunately, storage manufacturers are helping small companies adopt these principles by introducing new, multi-tiered solutions that are affordable and easy to use.

Building Tiered Storage
If you decide to adopt tiered storage, you'll need to invest in some core hardware -- a combination of high- and low-availability media that varies by customer.

After we evaluate your business needs, we may recommend an entry-level appliance that offers multiple tiers in a single box, and offers such features as:

• Up to eight attached SATA enclosures, providing up to 48 TB of native capacity
• A Fibre Channel 2U controller shelf that connects to SATA and/or SCSI disk enclosures, providing a flexible, low-cost, high-capacity storage solution
• High-end functions (e.g., RAID-6, Logical Cache Partitioning, Virtual Storage Ports)
• Certification under Microsoft's Simple SAN for Windows Server program to ensure SAN interoperability and simple hardware setup

Storage Management Software
Once you have your hardware tiers in place, you can either manually move data between tiers -- or automate the task with storage management software. These tools transparently transfer rarely used files to lower storage tiers -- and can inform administrators about possible areas for efficiency improvements.

Here's how it works:

When a scheduled or predetermined watermark is reached, inactive files are transparently and automatically migrated to the secondary storage tier -- reducing backup times and improving operational efficiency. These software tools use rule-driven migration policies to guide the movement of files to lower-cost storage options.
Other software tools group physical disks into logical volumes to improve disk utilization and eliminate storage-related downtime. Plus, they can enable your company to perform advanced operations, such as data snapshots and replication.

With a little advance planning -- and a commitment to acquire the proper technology tools -- you can help your company cope with the ever-increasing onslaught of data. And remember, you don't have to do it alone.

We can evaluate your individual business needs and recommend the appropriate tiered-storage components for your unique environment. Call us today to discuss how we can help you achieve your long-term storage goals.