Transparent cloud tiering

Transparent cloud tiering is a licensed function that enables volume data to be copied and transferred to cloud storage. The system supports creating connections to cloud service providers to store copies of volume data in private or public cloud storage.

With transparent cloud tiering, administrators can move older data to cloud storage to free up capacity on the system. Point-in-time snapshots of data can be created on the system and then copied and stored on the cloud storage. An external cloud service provider manages the cloud storage, which reduces storage costs for the system. Before data can be copied to cloud storage, a connection to the cloud service provider must be created from the system. A cloud account is an object on the system that represents a connection to a cloud service provider by using a particular set of credentials. These credentials differ depending on the type of cloud service provider that is being specified. Most cloud service providers require the host name of the cloud service provider and an associated password, and some cloud service providers also require certificates to authenticate users of the cloud storage. Public clouds use certificates that are signed by well-known certificate authorities. Private cloud service providers can use either a self-signed certificate or a certificate that is signed by a trusted certificate authority. These credentials are defined on the cloud service provider and passed to the system through the administrators of the cloud service provider. A cloud account defines whether the system can successfully communicate and authenticate with the cloud service provider by using the account credentials. If the system is authenticated, it can then access cloud storage to either copy data to the cloud storage or restore data that is copied to cloud storage back to the system. The system supports one cloud account to a single cloud service provider. Migration between providers is not supported.

Each cloud service provider divides cloud storage into segments for each client that uses the cloud storage. These objects store only data specific to that client. The names of the objects begin with a prefix that you can specify when you create the account for the system. A prefix defines system-specific content that the object stores and supports multiple independent systems to store data to a single cloud account. Each cloud service provider uses different terminology for these storage objects.