Drobo Announces Automated Data-Aware Tiering

Drobo, Inc. announced availability of its Automated Data-Aware Tiering technology.

This advancement combines Drobo’s automation with SSDs and data tiering to allow SMB customers to optimise their application performance – without the need for extensive technical expertise or budgets that are required for traditional high-end data tiering with SSD solutions.

This new functionality is now available on the Drobo B1200i storage system.

"Drobo’s approach to storage is different: it meets needs of end customers who want a solution that is affordable and easy to use," remarked Joe Fagan at group product marketing director at CMS Peripherals Ltd. "Drobo’s innovation takes tiering to a whole new level, making the technology accessible to SMEs in the UK, delivering sophisticated storage in a very easy and affordable way."

The advancement allows SSDs to co-exist with HDDs in a single system, allowing customers to enjoy a single pool of automated storage that has both capacity (from HDDs) and performance (from SSDs).

It also provides automatic performance acceleration and optimisation across all of a business’s applications – from VMware to Microsoft Exchange, SQL, SharePoint, Hyper-V and other business-critical applications – without the need to configure SSDs, tune applications or manage dedicated storage for multiple applications.

It advances and exceeds other traditional,
enterprise data tiering approaches in the following ways:

• Automated – Like all Drobo advancements, Automated Data-Aware Tiering requires zero configuration to deliver results. Customers insert two or three SSDs into their B1200i to realize the performance acceleration from the SSDs while maintaining the capacity of HDDs. Other approaches require manual configuration and provisioning of the SSDs, provisioning of multiple storage RAID groups or pools, and complex configuration of applications with respect to specific storage volumes.
• Immediate – Once the SSDs are inserted into a Drobo B1200i, performance acceleration happens automatically within minutes. Other approaches require data to be placed initially on slower bulk tiers, and then possibly be migrated to a faster tier only after days or weeks of empirical evidence.
• Dynamic and Adaptable – Because Drobo’s data tiering is data-aware and application-independent, it dynamically adapts to changes in application sets and workloads. As applications or patterns change, Drobo’s data tiering adjusts accordingly to optimize performance, without manual intervention. Traditional approaches often require specific application re-configuration, or the costly and complex addition of new SSD pools dedicated to new applications.
• Affordability – Automated Data-Aware Tiering on the B1200i system includes 18TB of HDDs and 600GB of SSD storage for a third of the price of traditional storage solutions with similar capabilities.

 
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