The amount of data companies must handle continues to rapidly increase. Annual growth rates of 70 per cent are not unusual. This has created a need for information lifecycle management. This includes the categorization of data into importance and required availability. ETERNUS storage systems deliver a one stop multi-tiered storage solution that, as well as including file server integration, data integrity and long-term data preservation, can autonomously move data to the appropriate storage tier in line with its use and value.

To maximize storage investments and preserve data on the most suitable storage media, at each stage in its lifecycle (creation/use/reference/preservation/deletion), ETERNUS offers the following group categories based on storage performance and cost.

Tier1: Online storage – this provides the highest-performance with high-speed update and search.

Tier2: Nearline storage – this provides large-capacity storage with good cost performance characteristics.

Tier3: Large-capacity offline storage - particularly suited for data preservation.

ETERNUS AS500 hides which tier of the hierarchical storage the data resides from applications. This allows each application to always access the data no matter how many times the data is redeployed. This data transparency also guarantees that applications do not need to be changed when the data is redeployed.