3PAR's Policy Advisor Aids Data Migration

Today 3PAR announced the availability of Policy Advisor, a software tool that analyzes data usage in the company's InServ storage clusters and recommends ways to optimize performance by moving data to different tiers. 3PAR's InServ clusters support up to eight controllers per array and employ tiers of high-performance Fibre Channel drives and high-volume SATA drives at various RAID levels.

The tool is a free add-on to Dynamic Optimization, firmware that controls 3PAR's multi-tiered storage clusters. Dynamic Optimization is a UI-based utility that permits administrators to set up and modify RAID levels, stripe width and other data services without interrupting user access to the array.

Policy Advisor monitors both physical and logical volumes and can migrate data based on capacity or performance requirements. For example, if an array has 100 drives at 80 percent capacity, and an administrator adds new drives, Policy Advisor will see the new volumes and recommend spreading the load. If the administrator accepts the recommendation, the Dynamic Optimization firmware migrates the data.

On the performance side, if Policy Advisor sees data sitting on the Fibre Channel tier that hasn't been accessed in a certain time period, it will suggest moving that data to the SATA tier to make high-performance Fibre Channel resources available. Policy Advisor is available today, and is a free upgrade for current Dynamic Optimization licensees. Pricing for Dynamic Optimization starts at US$1500.