Effective Storage Tiering for Databases | SNIA

Abstract

Most databases occupy several files. Typical access patterns result in some heavily accessed files and some not. Moreover, these access characteristics change over time. This presentation describes a tiering mechanism for dynamically identifying hot and cold files and relocating them to suitable storage media, transparently to database managers and other applications. For example, when the “temperature” (access rate) of a file exceeds a threshold, the files might move to solid state disk. When the files “cool,” they return to lower-cost storage media. File relocation makes storage tiering for databases possible, without requiring that system or database administrators micromanage data placement.