Creating a tiering storage rule

You can create a storage rule to implement tiering, which moves data from a directory-container storage pool on disk to cloud or tape storage. When the tiering storage rule is active, eligible data is tiered daily.

Before you begin

Consider whether tiering is appropriate, given your storage environment and business goals. For instructions, see Determining whether tiering is appropriate for your storage environment.
Review the following restrictions:
- A tiering storage rule specifies when data is tiered from one or more directory-container storage pools to a cloud-container or tape storage pool. The source and target storage pools must exist before you create the tiering storage rule.
- For cloud tiering, the target must be a cloud-container storage pool on a Microsoft Azure cloud computing system or on a cloud computing system that uses the Simple Storage Service (S3) protocol, such as IBM Cloud® Object Storage or Amazon Web Services (AWS) S3. For the latest information about cloud object storage services that are supported, see technote 2000915.
- For tape tiering, the target storage pool must be defined for a physical or virtual tape library.
To optimize tiering, consider using this strategy:
1. Create a tiering storage rule. By default, the newly created rule is inactive.
2. Create a subrule to tier data from a single client. To select the best option for tiering data from the client, see Determining whether tiering is appropriate for your storage environment.
3. Modify the parent tiering storage rule to make it active. The parent rule and its subrule will run daily.
4. Verify the tiering results. If necessary, update the subrule to add more clients or create additional subrules.
Tip: To view an example of how to set up tiering, see Tiering scenario: A step-by-step example.
Before you tier data to cloud storage, configure replication to create a backup copy of the data in the directory-container storage pool. The preferred method is to configure replication with the PROTECT STGPOOL command. For instructions, see Replicating client data to another server.
Restriction: Data that is tiered to cloud storage is no longer protected by the PROTECT STGPOOL process.
Before you tier data to tape storage, consider whether to enable collocation. Collocation can reduce the number of volumes that must be accessed when a large amount of data must be restored. You can enable collocation by specifying the COLLOCATE parameter on the DEFINE STGPOOL or UPDATE STGPOOL command.

About this task

A tiering storage rule specifies the following information:

Whether the rule is active (enabled). When the rule is active, the Active toggle is dark blue.
The server for which the rule is specified.
A target pool. The target pool is the storage pool to which data is tiered.
Tip: After you create a tiering storage rule, you can create a tiering subrule that will tier data for specified subrule members to a different target pool than the parent rule.
One or more source pools. The source pools are the directory-container storage pools where data is originally backed up.
The rule name.
The type of data to tier. You can specify one of the following options:

All data

Tiers all data that reaches the specified age threshold. This option is also known as tiering by age.

Inactive data

Tiers only inactive data that reaches the specified age threshold. This option is also known as tiering by state.
Tip: To help ensure that active data can be quickly restored, select the option to tier only inactive data. By selecting this option, you ensure that active data remains on disk storage, from which restore operations are typically faster.

Specify by subrule

Tiers data as specified by one or more subrules of the parent rule. If the parent rule has no subrules, no data is tiered.
The age threshold, which is the number of days to keep data in the source pools before the server tiers the data to the target pool.
The rule's scheduled start time and maximum duration.

Procedure

To create a storage rule for tiering, complete the following steps:

On the Storage Rules page, click Create Rule.
On the Create Rule page, complete the fields.
Click Create.

Results

The tiering storage rule is created and its properties are displayed on the Properties tab of the Details page. By default, the tiering storage rule is inactive. If you activate the tiering storage rule, the rule runs on a daily schedule.

Tiering results differ, depending on whether the data is tiered to cloud or tape storage:

Cloud storage: If data in a directory-container storage pool is compressed, encrypted, or both, the data is moved to the cloud-container storage pool in the same format. All extents that are required to rebuild a cloud object are copied to the tier, if the extents are not already there.
Tape storage: If data in a directory-container storage pool is compressed or deduplicated, and the data is tiered to tape, the data is no longer compressed or deduplicated. If data is encrypted on a client and tiered to tape, the data remains encrypted on tape. If data is encrypted by the IBM Spectrum Protect server and tiered to tape, the data is decrypted on tape.

What to do next

Optionally, you can take the following actions:

To specify exceptions to the tiering storage rule, create one or more subrules. For instructions about creating subrules, see Creating a tiering subrule.
When you are ready to activate the tiering storage rule, on the Properties tab, click Modify, click the Active toggle, and click Save. The active rule and any subrules run daily at the scheduled time.
To protect data that was tiered to tape, encrypt tape drives by following the instructions in Configuring tape drive encryption.
To ensure that data that was tiered to tape is backed up, set up a daily backup schedule. For more information, see Scheduling clients to be backed up.