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Storage Tiering

Terms related to simplyblock

Dynamic Provisioning in Kubernetes Erasure Coding Data Replication Hybrid Cloud Storage Storage Quality of Service (QoS) Kubernetes StatefulSet Object Storage vs Block Storage Storage Tiering Block Storage Volume Snapshotting Container Storage Interface Hyper-Converged Storage Disaggregated Storage MAUS Architecture NVMe over RoCE NVMe over FC Blockbridge StorPool Portworx Lightbits Labs Valkey LINBIT RAID Software-Defined Storage (SDS) RDMA (Remote Direct Memory Access) DPDK (Data Plane Development Kit) iSCSI (Internet Small Computer Systems Interface) SPDK Copy-On-Write (CoW) NVMe Latency Storage Latency IOPS (Input/Output Operations Per Second) NVMe over TCP (NVMe/TCP) Thin Provisioning Distributed Storage System Write-Ahead Log (WAL) TiDB Interbase ArangoDB Memgraph TDengine Qdrant CouchDB Hazelcast DuckDB CockroachDB CrateDB SAP Hana Teradata Snowflake Databricks Weaviate Pinecone ScyllaDB Marqo RocksDB Aerospike Singlestore Timescale MariaDB Apache Cassandra Couchbase InfluxDB Neo4j Clickhouse Elasticsearch Redis MySQL Microsoft SQL Server Oracle MongoDB PostgreSQL Open-Source Storage MinIO Longhorn Amazon EBS Rook OpenEBS NVMe-oF Kubernetes OpenStack Ceph

Storage tiering is a data management strategy that classifies and moves data between different types of storage media based on performance, cost, and access frequency. The goal is to optimize both cost and performance by storing hot (frequently accessed) data on high-speed storage like NVMe SSDs and cold (rarely accessed) data on slower, cost-efficient media like HDDs or cloud archives.

Tiering can be manual or automated, and is often a core feature in software-defined storage platforms such as simplyblock, where intelligent tiering logic moves data in real time based on workload behavior.

How Storage Tiering Works

Storage systems assign data to different tiers based on rules or real-time analytics. Common tiers include:

  • Tier 0: NVMe SSDs for ultra-low latency
  • Tier 1: SATA SSDs for general-purpose workloads
  • Tier 2: HDD arrays for archival or backup
  • Tier 3: Cloud object storage (e.g., S3 Glacier) for long-term retention

Tiering can occur at the file, block, or object level. In block-based systems like simplyblock, tiering is handled automatically at the block level to avoid performance bottlenecks.

Benefits of Storage Tiering

Implementing storage tiering brings significant operational and financial advantages:

  • Cost efficiency: High-performance storage is used only where needed, while cold data is moved to cheaper media.
  • Performance optimization: Critical applications benefit from NVMe speed, while infrequently used data doesn’t consume premium IOPS.
  • Scalability: Supports growing datasets across multiple mediums without rearchitecting.
  • Improved SLAs: Aligns data placement with performance policies or service-level objectives.
  • Resource utilization: Minimizes overprovisioning and reduces storage sprawl.

In multi-tenant environments, tiering also supports differentiated storage plans with varied QoS policies, backed by platforms like simplyblock’s multi-tenancy features.

Common Use Cases for Storage Tiering

  • Database platforms: Keep indexes and active partitions on NVMe; archive old partitions on HDD.
  • Virtualized environments: Assign VMs based on their performance profile.
  • Cloud-native pipelines: Automatically offload logs, backups, and staging datasets to lower tiers.
  • Edge deployments: Optimize small-form storage footprints with dynamic tiering.
  • Regulatory compliance: Migrate older data to long-term storage while maintaining retention policies.

Storage Tiering vs Caching vs Archiving

Tiering is often confused with similar strategies like caching or archiving. Here’s how they differ:

FeatureStorage TieringCachingArchiving
PurposeBalance performance/costAccelerate read/write speedRetain inactive data long-term
Data MovementMulti-directionalFrequently accessed data onlyOne-time migration
Data TypeActive and semi-activeHot data onlyCold/inactive data
Media TypesSSD, HDD, cloud tiersDRAM, NVMe, SSDHDD, tape, cold cloud
User AccessTransparentTransparentMay require manual restore

Storage Tiering in Simplyblock™

Simplyblock enables block-level adaptive tiering across NVMe SSDs and future-integrated tiers like HDD or object stores. Key features include:

The result is efficient, cloud-native storage infrastructure that dynamically adjusts to workload demand without manual tuning.

External Resources

Questions and Answers

Why use storage tiering in modern infrastructure?

Storage tiering optimizes performance and cost by automatically moving data between high-speed and lower-cost storage layers. Frequently accessed data stays on fast media like NVMe, while cold data moves to slower, cheaper tiers—perfect for balancing performance with budget.

How does storage tiering work in Kubernetes?

In Kubernetes, storage tiering is implemented through Container Storage Interface (CSI) and storage class definitions. Platforms like Simplyblock can dynamically provision high-performance NVMe over TCP volumes while offloading inactive data to lower tiers.

What are the benefits of storage tiering for cloud cost optimization?

Storage tiering reduces cloud spend by keeping only hot data on premium storage. Cold or infrequently accessed data can be moved to cheaper tiers, aligning with cloud storage optimization goals and long-term retention strategies.

Does storage tiering affect data access speed?

Only cold data stored on lower-performance media may experience slower access times. Hot data remains on fast NVMe or SSD tiers, ensuring mission-critical applications retain high-speed performance. Intelligent tiering keeps this balance optimized in real-time.

Can storage tiering be used securely in multi-tenant environments?

Yes, especially when combined with encryption at rest. Each volume tier can maintain encryption and tenant isolation, ensuring security even as data moves between fast and archival storage layers.