What is Cloud Tiering and How Does it Work?

Cloud tiering is an archiving strategy that allows organizations to move data that is rarely or infrequently accessed to less expensive cloud storage. The practice frees up prime space for the most critical workloads and applications in on-prem storage or high-performance cloud storage tiers—which are typically more expensive because they offer the fastest, most reliable data access.  

The cheaper storage, typically referred to as cold storage, doesn’t offer the same high performance and low latency of top-tier storage, but the data stored there is rarely, if ever, accessed. Lower costs and less need to access the data allow organizations to retain that data longer for compliance purposes or possible future use.  

Cloud tiering is an important element in the efficiency of modern data management. As volumes of data continue to increase, organizations can balance frequency of use with storage costs to ensure that the most critical data is always available and that the rarely accessed data isn’t eating up an inordinate amount of the storage budget.  

This article explores: 

• Cloud-tiering benefits, operations, and challenges 

• Choosing the right cloud-tiering solution 

• Wasabi storage benefits vs traditional storage and hyperscale cloud tiering 

• Frequently asked questions 

Cloud-tiering benefits, operations, and challenges 

With cloud tiering, organizations can optimize their storage costs without sacrificing performance needed for top-tier data. The tiers represent the data’s value to the organization.  

Cold storage typically holds archival data, perhaps retained for compliance with data privacy or security regulations or because it might be valuable later to the company. An example of this is raw footage stored by a media company. After the final product has been edited and completed, the organization might still want to hold on to that raw footage because it could open future revenue opportunities. Cold data is often stored “cheap and deep” in cloud-based object storage.  

Hot storage is reserved for business-critical applications and data, such as in-memory caches or real-time data streams. That data requires high-performance storage that allows immediate access and high availability. Hot data can be stored in fast network attached systems (NAS), flash storage on advanced solid-state drives (SSDs), or even high-performance cloud storage tiers.   

The concept of cloud tiering was a natural outgrowth of traditional data tiering in which IT would keep specific types of data in different types of on-prem storage based on performance and speed of access. This arrangement could include NAS for hot data and physical tape drives for cold data. Cloud storage was an extension of that practice. Cloud storage tiers follow the same philosophy as on-prem data tiering, keeping hot data in fast storage and cold data in cheaper, high-capacity, less performant media or locations. 

As more organizations move to a hybrid, multicloud IT model, cloud tiering has only become more important and a necessary component of modern hybrid data management. 

Key components of a cloud-tiering architecture 

Cloud-tiering architectures require policies and rules that define which data is moved where and when. These guidelines, which include data classification, retention policies, automation policies, data movement rules, and more, are critical to keeping costs and performance optimized across the entire IT ecosystem. 

Data classification policies 

IT must categorize different types of data based on how frequently it’s accessed, its importance to the organization, and regulatory compliance issues. While the main categories of data are hot and cold, there are often additional classes such as warm (data that doesn’t require immediate access but is used periodically, such as reporting or analytics data) or archive (data that is retained long-term for compliance purposes or historical purposes). 

Retention and deletion policies 

Defining retention and deletion periods is an important part of any data management strategy. These time periods are often based on compliance requirements as well as how often the data is accessed.   

Cloud tiering can take a lot of preparation, as these rules and policies are what will guide the practice and cause it to succeed or fail. Fortunately, the industry is rife with solutions designed to help organizations through these considerations. Some of the most used cloud-tiering solutions are available through popular cloud service providers, including AWS S3 Lifecycle Policies, Google Cloud Storage Object Lifecycle Management, and Microsoft Azure Blob Storage Lifecycle Management. Other solutions include CloudHealth Cloud Management from VMware, Veeam Backup and Recovery, Commvault Complete Backup & Recovery, and NetApp ONTAP.

A good cloud-tiering solution will typically integrate well with an organization’s existing on-premises or cloud infrastructure. 

How traditional cloud tiering operates 

Rules and policies are important for determining what data is stored in the various tiers, when it is moved, how long it’s kept, and so on.  

Common criteria for migrating data between tiers includes how long it’s been since the data was accessed, its original creation date, and how frequently or recently the information was updated or modified. Other criteria include access patterns, inactivity period, retrieval costs, and performance requirements. 

Moving cloud data to appropriate tiers and keeping it synchronized across different locations and devices are important aspects of data management and ensuring data consistency and accuracy. Organizations can synchronize data using a variety of tools:  

• Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) 

• WebSockets, which provide persistent connections between servers and clients 

• Database replication, either synchronous or asynchronous 

• Cloud sync tools from cloud service providers 

Lifecycle policies help inform organizations when and where to move data over time. These policies include moving hot data to cold storage after it reaches a certain age or returning cold data to warm or hot storage when it is accessed more than once in a several-month period. 

Automation in cloud tiering 

Many tiering solutions now offer automated cloud tiering, which provides a range of benefits to organizations.  

An automated cloud-tiering system will operate according to rules and policies defined by the organization, but once the guidelines are set, the system can tier data and move it around as needed according to those rules without the need for human intervention. These systems continuously monitor data access and usage to maintain an optimal balance between storage costs and access performance.   

As AI and machine learning technologies mature, they are enhancing automated cloud tiering even more. For instance, an AI-based tiering solution could analyze historical usage of different types of data and forecast trends and future needs for specific data, moving it to higher tiers shortly before it’s needed. AI can also detect unexpected patterns in data access, such as atypical usage, and alert IT to the need for a review of tiering policies.   

Benefits of automated cloud tiering include:  

• Significant reduction in IT data management workload 

• Elimination of human errors or oversight 

• More efficient and timely data migration 

• Better ability to predict storage costs  

The cost efficiency of cloud tiering 

One of the most important benefits of cloud tiering is the cost efficiency and savings organizations can realize when they optimize storage costs with performance needs.  

Cold storage offers high capacity at very low cost. Data in cold storage is rarely accessed, so in addition to the low base cost per gigabyte, it also offers savings by eliminating egress fees. These are charges that are incurred every time data is accessed and can add up quickly to a substantial additional cost if the data is accessed often. Ingress fees are another type of data storage charge, and it’s incurred whenever new data is uploaded to the cloud storage location.  (Learn why Wasabi doesn't charge for ingress or egress fees.)

Hot storage is the most expensive storage type because it offers the high performance organizations need to keep operations running day to day. Accessing hot data from traditional hyperscale clouds also incurs egress fees, but because the data is so critical to the business it’s considered part of the cost of doing business.  

Improved data management and accessibility 

Another important benefit of cloud tiering is that it leaves the most critical, frequently accessed data in the highest-performance storage. So, organizations have immediate access to the data they need the most. Performance is also aided by preventing less-important data from filling up the storage drive.  

Data governance is also a big part of data management. It involves knowing how to use, treat, analyze, retain, and share data and often goes hand in hand with regulatory compliance. Cloud tiering allows organizations to simplify both governance and compliance by separating different types of data into different tiers. Automated data lifecycle management keeps compliance in check and helps streamline governance.  

Cloud tiering can also help simplify disaster recovery when an organization loses data to a security breach or unexpected outage. Organizations can reduce backup storage costs by using lower tiers for less-needed backup data and use hot storage for only the most critical backups.  

How to implement a cloud-tiering strategy 

To implement a cloud-tiering strategy, organizations typically go through the following steps: 

1. Identification of data into critical/non-critical categories — All data across the organization needs to be considered and placed somewhere in the spectrum of critical vs. non-critical. The organization’s predefined rules and policies will aid greatly in this exercise and inform which data should be placed where, how often it’s used, and how long it should be retained. 

2. Evaluate current storage usage and future requirements — Knowing what goes where means being very familiar with existing storage infrastructure and having an eye toward scaling in the future. 

3. Movement and verification of data — This step entails moving different sets of data to their appropriate storage tiers. Many cloud-tiering solutions have features that allow organizations to automatically verify data movement, monitor unused storage space, and check data integrity.  

4. Automation configuration and deployment — In this step, organizations set up automation, programming predefined rules and policies into the system so data can be monitored, moved, and activated without human intervention. 

5. Assurance of access and usage — Once data is placed in hot and cold storage locations and the system is automated to monitor and move data as needed, IT will still need to gain a complete understanding of how to access and use data across every tier and location. In addition to helping IT be more effective in data retrieval and use, this familiarity will also be a great benefit if data is ever needed for disaster recovery.  

Challenges in traditional cloud tiering   

Cloud tiering can simplify many aspects of data management in the cloud, but it also comes with some challenges, including security and compliance, as well as managing multicloud complexity. 

Data security and compliance issues 

With different storage tiers can come differing standards for security and compliance. That sometimes makes it a bit more difficult to ensure data privacy and security across tiers. It can also make compliance more complex. Ways to overcome these challenges include:  

• Implement consistent policies and encryption across each tier.  

• Regularly review security configurations to maintain consistency.  

• Use role-based access controls (RBAC) and centralized access control solutions to closely supervise who can access which data.  

• Consider that hot data might need more stringent access control than cold data.  

• Ensure encryption keys are managed securely and that encryption is consistent across all storage tiers. Many cloud provider tools and third-party solutions are available to help organizations enforce encryption policies.  

• Create policies that require all storage tiers to meet minimum regulatory requirements and review evolving standards to adjust strategies as needed.  

• Make use of cloud providers’ storage regions and implement data localization policies to ensure maintenance of data sovereignty and privacy.  

• Enforce retention rules across tiers with automated lifecycle management policies.  

• Devise data deletion processes and make sure data is securely removed from all tiers as required. Many cloud provider tools offer secure data wipe and verification capabilities. 

Managing complexity in hybrid and multicloud environments 

Hybrid and multicloud environments add complexity to IT processes in general, and that includes cloud tiering. Because organizations can have tiering across multiple cloud platforms as well as across on-prem infrastructure, it’s important to use tools such as data movement automation, automated synchronization, and data replication to mitigate the challenge of data consistency.  

Organizations can reduce complexity in cloud data management by implementing consistent policies across on-prem and cloud environments and using unified management tools that provide complete visibility into data in every tier and environment.  

While cloud tiering is designed to keep hot data in the highest-performing storage locations, moving data between on-prem and cloud storage can sometimes affect performance. Using data caching solutions can help minimize latency and keep access speeds where they should be. Network optimization can also help ensure that data transfers stay efficient across environments.  

When these challenges of complexity are mitigated, organizations can reap quantifiable benefits of cloud tiering, which include storage cost savings, operational cost savings, better access speeds, reduced system overhead, better storage efficiency, increased storage scalability and flexibility, and much more. 

Choosing the right cloud-tiering solution 

Choosing the right cloud-tiering solution often comes down to choosing the right cloud service provider. Keep in mind that choice can sometimes be affected by geographical regions for data sovereignty concerns. Organizations must have a deep familiarity with their data and storage needs to make the right choice.  

Important considerations when choosing a cloud storage provider include:  

• Pricing model and ongoing storage costs — Whether pay-as-you-go, subscription fees, or tiered pricing, the model should match the organization’s usage and access needs.  

• Storage capacity and ability to scale — How quickly can storage be scaled when needed? 

• Performance and speed of data access — Consider latency, upload and download speeds, and reliability. 

• Security measures — Data encryption is critical, both at rest and in transit. Immutability is another key feature to consider as part of a data protection/cyber resilience plan.

• Access control — Keep unauthorized users out with advanced identity management features and access controls.  

• Compliance — Make sure the provider is certified compliant with relevant regulations, such as HIPAA or GDPR.  

• Availability and durability — Assess durability and uptime claims.  

• Backup and recovery options — Automated backups and the ability to dictate their frequency are both important. Get familiar with the provider’s disaster recovery processes. 

• Data management features — File organization capabilities such as metadata tagging, search, and versioning.  

• Integration with existing systems — API support is important for working well with other applications. 

• User interface and management experience — The management interface should be intuitive and include the information you need the most.  

• Technical and customer support — Consider the provider’s support structure and availability as well as response times and service-level agreements (SLAs). 

Wasabi storage benefits vs. traditional storage and cloud tiering 

Cloud tiering is an essential part of today’s data management strategy. It keeps storage costs down while ensuring that the most critical data remains in the highest-performance storage for quick and efficient access and use. The traditional way of cloud tiering can increase complexity across on-prem and cloud storage environments, but not with Wasabi.  

Wasabi does cloud storage differently from most providers, with highly performant "hot" storage that is low cost, accessible anytime, and with no fees for egress or API requests. That keeps performance high and total costs low and predictable, making Wasabi ideal for use as an active archive. Cloud tiering to Wasabi keeps your data safely stored offsite for long-term retention, but accessible at a moments notice.

Not charging egress fees sets Wasabi apart from hyperscaler cloud storage services, allowing organization access to their archival storage at no additional cost. Archive storage access rates are typically very high to compensate for the low per-TB cost of the storage, but Wasabi flips the paradigm on its head, offering no charge for access and a price per-TB that rivals many cold storage tiers.

Consider this example: A large media production house in the Netherlands stored raw footage from past completed projects in an on-prem file cluster that also housed the company’s newest and most in-use footage. IT leaders recognized that keeping the older data on-prem was quite an inefficient and “expensive parking space.” As storage capacity shrank, the company knew it needed a new solution that would allow it to move the older raw footage to another location where it could be stored long-term, but still be accessible if needed. 

The company could have moved all its older footage to the cooler or cold storage tiers offered by the hyperscalers to lower their total costs and free up premium on-prem storage space for the newer data. However, the egress and ingress fees that the hyperscalers charge were a deterrent because costs would rise unpredictably whenever they needed access to their data. In this case, the company chose Wasabi Cloud NAS, which was ideal for keeping storage costs low and footage accessible because Wasabi doesn’t charge egress fees—just a single, predictable per-TB price. 

Frequently Asked Questions