Simplified storage management

IBM Storage Scale can help you achieve information lifecycle management (ILM) through powerful policy-driven, automated tiered storage management.

Storage pools

A storage pool is a collection of disks or RAIDs with similar properties that are managed together as a group. Storage pools provide a method to partition storage within a file system. While you plan how to configure your storage, consider factors such as:

• Improved price performance by matching the cost of storage to the value of the data.
• Improved performance by reducing the contention for premium storage and impact of slower devices.
• Improved reliability by providing replication based on need and better failure containment.

Policies

Files are assigned to a storage pool based on defined policies. Policies provide for:

Placement policies

Placing files in a specific storage pool when the files are created.

File management policies

• Migrating files from one storage pool to another.
• Deleting files based on file characteristics.
• Changing the replication status of files.
• Snapshot metadata scans and file list creation.
• Compressing static files.

Filesets

Filesets provide a method for partitioning a file system and allow administrative operations at a finer granularity than the entire file system. For example, filesets allow you to:

• Define data block and inode quotas at the fileset level.
• Apply policy rules to specific fileset.
• Create snapshots at the fileset level.

For more information on storage pools, filesets, and policies, see Information lifecycle management for IBM Storage Scale.