Storage Farm Tiers and Classes
Tier Definitions and Rates:
Three Tiers of SAN-based storage are offered, as follows:
Tier 1: Highest performance and availability, while low cost is less important. Examples of this would include high-usage operational databases and applications that are critical to the daily operation of the University. This is the only tier providing connectivity to the IBM mainframe.
Tier 3: Lowest cost of online storage, while performance and high availability are less important. Examples of this include development & test systems, and low-activity departmental file servers.
Tier 2: Mixtures of the above, where performance, cost and availability all have some level of importance. Examples of this would include lower usage databases and applications, or applications that are important, but not critical, to the operation of the University.
Rates (Monthly fees):
The rates below are effective beginning July 1, 2007:
| Storage Management Charge (per system): | $64.00 | |
| Fibre Channel Connection Charge (per connection): | $52.00 | |
| Tier 1 ($/GB-mo): | $3.43 | |
| Tier 2 ($/GB-mo): | $0.49 | |
| Tier 3 ($/GB-mo): | $0.29 | |
Storage Farm Classes
Systems Support uses the class assignment to determine data flow requirements and obtain logical units (LUNs) from the Storage Farm. Classes help to keep LUNs organized and to optimize system performance.
Discuss your needs and server uses with Systems Support staff.
Sample Class Assignments
The class assignments in the sample are based on Tier 2 Storage. (See Tiers for more information.)
| Class | I/O | Thruput | Performance Focus | Example |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | High | Low | Move many small files | Transactional database |
| 2 | Low | High | Move many large files | Streaming video |
| 3 | High | High | Move many mixed size files | Mail hubs, NFS/CIFS servers |
| 4 | Low | Low | Sporadic low access | "Archive" or "nearline" storage |
| 5 | ? | ? | Sporadic steady access, response time matters |
Web servers, application servers |