Dimension Data Introduces Tiered Storage Across Global Cloud

Dimension
Data plc, announced the availability of tiered storage options as
part of its enterprise Public
Compute-as-a-Service (CaaS) offering.

Public cloud clients can access three
tiers of block-based storage at $0.07 to $0.44 per GB per month,
enabling businesses to increase efficiencies in the cloud and reduce
total storage cost by matching the level of protection, performance
and accessibility of data to the storage media that suits an
application.

Based on EMC’s VNX storage platform,
the company will offer high-performance, standard and economy tiers
tailored to fulfill the requirements of workloads and data sets. The
VNX Series is a unified storage platform that is optimized for
virtual applications in the cloud. Built with simplicity in mind,
tiered storage options can be selected and provisioned through a
web-based user interface or API, enabling organizations to change the
type of storage required for cloud servers on the fly. The service
leverages SSDs to accelerate performance for both the
high-performance and standard options.

Steve Nola, cloud solutions business unit CEO at Dimension Data said: "Dimension Data is committed to
providing a high-performance cloud that is easy to use and customize.
Providing additional options around storage media is an important
innovation that enables our clients to leverage the cloud for a
variety of applications including high-performance databases, as well
as less demanding applications such as archiving, backup and
long-term data retention."

Clients can select tiered storage
options based on the performance, availability and cost requirement
for each application:

Tier 1 – High-Performance: 600GB
15k drives (RAID-5)

• Use Case: cloud applications
  that use online active files, database tables, Web and user files

Tier 2 – Standard: 2TB 7,200rpm
(RAID-5)

• Use Case: cloud applications
  that use VM/VDI files, online archive videos, photos, backups and
  snapshots, OS images

Tier 3 – Economy: 3TB 7,200rpm
(RAID-5)

• Use Case: cloud applications
  that use offline master backup, DR, gold copy, archive, long-term
  retention

Tiered storage is available to clients
of Dimension Data Managed Cloud Platforms located in the United
States (California), Australia and Europe. The service will be rolled
out to other public CaaS environments in the coming months. Existing
Public CaaS customer cloud servers will be associated with the
standard tier, which was the previous level of storage offered.

The storage tiers are priced by
hour:

• Economy – $0.0001/GB/hour;

• Standard – $0.0003/GB/hour;

• High-Performance – $0.0006/GB/hour.