This post was mentioned on Twitter by chrismevans: [blog] – do we need Fast V1, EMC? http://bit.ly/1U4NFt...

Thanks very much for giving automated tiered storage the attention it deserves. This type of technology should be made available to all enterprises, whether they’re small and only require a few terabytes or whether they’re global companies. Of course I think Compellent has the best tiered storage solution , but the important thing is that end-users carefully consider what’s available today that they can grow into even if they’re not ready to pay for it today. We felt that way when we launched automated tiered storage in 2005 and we still believe it. That’s why we’re still evolving the technology, working on Storage Tiering 3.0 so to speak, because we know the EMCs and IBMs of the world will keep working to catch up one day.

In several important ways, Compellent’s Data Progression technology is both Storage Tiering 1.0 and 2.0 by your definition. Let me share a few thoughts:

We think relative frequency of access is actually a better indicator of end user need instead of performance. The way Compellent’s Dynamic Block Architecture works is almost like tracking and managing the popularity of blocks. We assume the data blocks people need the most should be on their highest performing tier of storage, whether SSD or FC. The ones they don’t need the most should be on less expensive storage like SATA. So it’s really tiering by frequency of access to increase both performance and cost savings.

Also, we already provide policy-based tiering – we just call the policies “profiles.” The default tiered storage profile is based on best practices feedback provided by thousands of sites using Data Progression. Most of our customers prefer the purely set-it-and-forget-it tiering method provided by the default profile. If users want more granular control they can change the profiles at any point in time through our GUI, and they can apply the same profile to multiple volumes. For instance, they can create a profile stipulating the percentage of a volume that will always be written to tier 1, tier 2 and tier 3. And if their business needs require, they can set a profile to dedicate 100% of a given volume to a single tier, such as SSD.

BTW, we filed the first patent back on March 22, 2007 . Here’s the link:

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=4&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PTXT&s1=aszmann&s2=aszmann&OS=aszmann+AND+aszmann&RS=aszmann+AND+aszmann

Thanks for taking the time to carefully analyze the available tiered solutions today and for giving me the opportunity to share my viewpoint. If you or anyone else has questions or would like more information, you can find me at twitter.com/liemnguyen or lnguyen@compellent.com.

Liem

And this Automation is indeed the value proposition; many customers today complain that they don’t have the people or time required to determine the appropriate tiering for either their current or their new applications; this leaves many using the de-facto 15K rpm drive as their platform, when either Flash or SATA (or a mix) might be more cost-effective for both CAPEX and OPEX.

I’ll defer the pricing discussion until after GA announcements later this quarter. And the patent topic really isn’t something I can comment upon at this time.