Detailed guidelines about tiering by age versus tiering by state

Detailed guidelines are provided to help you decide whether to tier data by age or tier data by state.

For general guidelines about tiering data by age or by state, see Determining whether tiering is appropriate for your storage environment. For detailed guidelines, review the following table.

Tip: The table does not include a column for tiering by age because that option is available for all client types that support tiering.
Table 1. Detailed information about tiering for various client types
Client type Capability to tier data by state Comments
IBM Storage Protect backup-archive client Yes For frequently accessed data, the tier-by-state option is preferred because active data remains in local disk storage, from which restore operations are typically faster. For infrequently accessed data, the tier-by-age option is preferred.
IBM Storage Protect for Databases: Data Protection for Microsoft SQL Server Yes For frequently accessed data, the tier-by-state option is preferred because active data remains in local disk storage. For infrequently accessed data, the tier-by-age option is preferred.
IBM Storage Protect for Databases: Data Protection for Oracle No Oracle Database data is always considered to be active. If you specify the tier-by-state option, which tiers only inactive data, no data is tiered.

To ensure that data is tiered, specify the tier-by-age option.

IBM Storage Protect for Databases: Data Protection for SAP Yes SAP database data is always considered to be archive data, which is inactive. Regardless of whether you specify the tier-by-age or tier-by-state option, all data that meets the specified age threshold is tiered. For this reason, you can use either option.
IBM Storage Protect HSM for Windows Yes Data that is backed up from IBM Storage Protect HSM for Windows is always considered to be archive data, which is inactive. Regardless of whether you specify the tier-by-age or tier-by-state option, all data that meets the specified age threshold is tiered. For this reason, you can use either option.
IBM Storage Protect for Mail: Data Protection for HCL Domino Yes For frequently accessed data, the tier-by-state option is preferred because active data remains in local disk storage. For infrequently accessed data, the tier-by-age option is preferred.
IBM Storage Protect for Mail: Data Protection for Microsoft Exchange Server Yes For frequently accessed data, the tier-by-state option is preferred because active data remains in local disk storage. For infrequently accessed data, the tier-by-age option is preferred.
IBM Storage Protect for Space Management No Data that is backed up from IBM Storage Protect for Space Management is stateless data that cannot be tiered by using the tier-by-state option.

To ensure that data is tiered, specify the tier-by-age option.

IBM Storage Protect for Virtual Environments Yes Because of dependencies on images, most of the data that is backed up from IBM Storage Protect for Virtual Environments is considered to be active. If you specify the tier-by-state option, only small amounts of data are tiered.

In production environments, do not tier data. In test and development environments, consider using the tier-by-age option.

IBM Storage Protect Plus No Data that is backed up from IBM Storage Protect Plus is stateless data that cannot be tiered by using the tier-by-state option. To ensure that data is tiered, specify the tier-by-age option.
Restrictions:
  • You cannot tier data from IBM Storage Protect Plus to tape. To store IBM Storage Protect Plus data on tape, copy the data to an IBM Storage Protect server for storage on physical tape media or in a virtual tape library. For instructions, see Configuring operations for copying data from S3 client to tape.
  • You can tier data from IBM Storage Protect Plus to cloud-container storage pools, but only to cloud storage classes that support the rapid recall of data. For example, if you are using Amazon Web Services (AWS) with the Simple Storage Service (S3) protocol, do not move the data to Amazon S3 Glacier.
Restriction: Tiering is not available for data from NetApp network-attached storage (NAS) file servers.