National Trust for Scotland deploys real-time autonomic data tiering

Dot Hill Systems Corp. has further expanded its UK footprint with the installation of an AssuredSAN RealStor™ array featuring RealTier™ storage tiering software at National Trust for Scotland (NTS), the conservation charity that protects and promotes Scotland's natural and cultural heritage.

Dot Hill AssuredSAN storage solutions were introduced to NTS in 2014 through Dot Hill gold authorized partner Trustco Plc, when its IT team, led by Scott Newton, Head of IT, was re-evaluating their existing data storage infrastructure. With a move towards server virtualisation hosted by several powerful nodes each running 60-70 virtual machines, the storage workload would be significant with unpredictable performance peaks requiring the use of hybrid SSD/HDD technology to meet data throughput requirements. NTS were searching for a hybrid solution that utilized data tiering to deliver real-time performance from SSDs for their dynamically changing virtualised workloads.

Dot Hill’s AssuredSAN array with RealStor suite of tools including RealTier autonomic real-time tiering software easily trumped the other storage solutions under evaluation, chiefly due to its ability to dynamically adapt to changing workloads in real time. No other solution offered the real-time data migration between SSD and HDD tiers which provides NTS with immediate SSD performance for applications demanding high storage performance without the need to invest in an all-flash storage array.

“Dot Hill RealStor was the only data tiering solution found to offer real-time data migration between storage tiers; all other systems performed data migration as a batch process typically during quiet periods,” said Scott Newton, Head of IT at National Trust for Scotland.

“The AssuredSAN RealStor system with real-time autonomic tiering has ensured that performance-hungry application data sets can take advantage of fast SSD technology when they need it most. Our solution provides performance acceleration for a wide range of applications without the need to invest in large amounts of flash-only based storage. It also eliminates the complication of having to determine which data sets need to reside on costly flash,” said Jim Jonez, vice president of marketing at Dot Hill.

A major benefit of the advanced real-time tiering algorithms within the AssuredSAN RealTier software is the capability to host several applications on a single array which can deliver SSD performance on tap whenever application workloads start to rise. In a typical environment not all applications require peak performance at the same time so a relatively small amount of solid state storage can be deployed to guarantee SSD levels of performance for the entire application set.