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Implementing a Tiered Storage Strategy (continued)

kept on primary storage systems. Data that is less urgent but still important to the business could be kept on SATA-based systems. Data that is static, or only periodically accessed, could be kept on disk-based archives. Finally, tape or optical storage would be used for deep archiving.

Five Storage Strategies
How can you effectively implement a tiered storage system? Here's a five-step plan:

Determine your goals What do you hope to achieve from moving to tiered storage? Reduce costs? Improve performance? Achieve better service levels? Some combination of the above? "Some enterprises are extremely cost-sensitive and are looking to cut storage-related expenses," says Greg Schulz, founder of the StorageIO Group, in Stillwater, Minn. "Others put performance first, as it can directly impact their ability to serve customers. Before you do anything, you have to establish your priorities."

Establish recovery point objectives and recovery time objectives for all data types Before you can determine what data belongs on what kind of storage device, you must decide your recovery point objectives (RPO) -- the point in time to which data must be restored to ensure smooth recovery of business processes that the data supports -- as well as your recovery time objectives (RTO), the maximum amount of time that you can afford for systems to be down after a failure. Without both an RPO and an RTO, you will not be able to implement a viable storage tier strategy. It's not good enough to define one or the other; you have to specify both. (article continues)

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