HP XP P9500 Storage - Manual (Page 21)

as efficiently as possible, resulting in data that is accessed infrequently being placed on lower
cost physical storage.
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Automatically migrate small portions of host volumes to the most suitable data drive according
to access frequency. Frequently accessed data is migrated to higher speed hard disk drives
(for example, SSD). Infrequently accessed data is migrated to lower cost and lower speed
hard disk drives (for example, SATA) to use the storage efficiently.
Smart Tiers simplifies storage administration by automating and eliminating the complexities of
efficiently using tiered storage. It automatically moves data on pages in Thin Provisioning virtual
volumes to the most appropriate storage media, according to workload, to maximize service levels
and minimize total cost of storage.
Smart Tiers gives you:
•
Improved storage resource usage
•
Improved return on high-cost storage tiers
•
Reduced storage management effort
•
More automation
•
Nondisruptive storage management
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Reduced costs
•
Improved overall performance
Tiers concept
When not using Smart Tiers, data is allocated to only one kind of data drive (without regard to
the workload) to the volumes because the volumes are configured with only one kind of data drive.
When using Smart Tiers, the higher speed data drive is automatically allocated to the volumes of
high workload, and the lower speed drive to the volumes of low workload,. This improves
performance and reduces costs.
Smart Tiers places the host volume's data across multiple tiers of storage contained in a pool. There
can be up to three tiers (high-, medium-, and low-speed layers) in a pool. Smart Tiers determines
tier usage based on data access levels. It allocates the page with high I/O load to the upper tier,
which contains a higher speed drive, and the page with low I/O load to the lower tier, which
contains a lower speed drive.
The following figure illustrates the basic tier concept.
When to use Smart Tiers
Smart Tiers is the best fit in an environment in which Thin Provisioning is a good fit.
For detailed information, see “Configuring thin provisioning ” (page 74) .
Tiers concept 21