According to an estimate, almost 80 percent of data is not mission critical and the remaining 20 percent gets accessed very often. However, a simple storage box cannot differentiate between mission-critical and non-critical data. Increasingly, the concept of giving the box intelligence to differentiate between various types of data is being implemented. EMC has been promoting it as information life cycle management and others may simply call it putting in a tiered architecture, so as to push the non-critical data into the background.

The intelligence comes from the software that resides over the storage network and depending on the priority being set by the user, it assigns a place to the data on the system.

A tiered architecture would involve a mix and match of technologies to store data. Fiber channel storage, though costly, is reliable and robust and forms the first tier where the mission-critical data is stored. As more and more IP-based networks get implemented, fiber can be replaced by IP. For business data, which is not mission-critical, fiber can be ignored and other cheaper options can be explored. And for normal data, which is accessed less frequently, NAS is also an option.

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