Promoting a holistic approach to addressing tiered storage needs, Oracle sets out to show how its solutions portfolio can align the right type of storage – flash, disk, and tape - with customers' unique environment needs for the best optimization for their data center in the white paper "Optimizing Information with a Tiered Storage Architecture".

This paper is an introduction to the concept of tiered storage, the business needs that drive it and the value of implementing a tiered storage strategy. Oracle states that this type of strategy helps realize the value of information, drives down costs, lowers risks, improves accessibility, ensures the correct information is saved and protected, and even takes advantage of technology changes into the future.

A tiered storage solution assigns different data to different types of storage media, with the goal of preserving accessibility and reducing a customer's total cost of storage. In the Oracle Solution Brief "End-to-End Choices in Tiered Storage Solutions," the three components of a tiered storage strategy are identified as:

• Primary storage. Stores new data from high-performance, mission-critical applications and databases. Access time is measured in milliseconds; storage media includes ultra-high performance flash or solid-state drives (SSD) and fibre channel (FC) storage.

• Secondary storage. Stores 30- to 90-day-old data needed for business continuity. Also used to store fixed content and backup and recovery data. Access time is in seconds; storage media includes unified storage, capacitydisks (SATA), and hybrids.

• Long-term or archival storage. Stores data older than 90 days (usually for legal compliance). Access time is measured in minutes; storage media includes capacity disks and tape.

The white paper fleshes out this definition even more and addresses the benefits a dynamically managed tiered storage solution can offer customers. The features of Oracle’s Storage Archive Manager (SAM) to dynamically manage different types of storage are highlighted in the context of meeting the business requirements of storing information.

The table of contents in the 14-page paper include:

Business Needs for Implementing Tiered Storage Solutions

• Information Is An Asset
• Legal and Corporate Regulations
• Huge and Growing Capacity Requirements

Data Characteristics When Using Tiered Storage

Tiered Storage Architecture

SAM Architecture and Functionality

Use Cases: Putting SAM to Work for Applications

Use cases for Today’s Tiered Storage Infrastructure

• SAM Use Case 1: Oracle Universal Content Management
• SAM Use Case 2: Archive RMAN Backup Images from Disk to Tape
• SAM Use Case 3: Archive Applications using Tiered Storage

More Information

"Optimizing Information with a Tiered Storage Architecture" - the Oracle White Paper

Sun Storage and Tape - product page

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