About Cloud Tier

10 August 2021

Cohesity Cloud Tier enables an additional storage tier where cold data can be stored. After you register supported existing cloud storage as a Cloud Tier target with the Cohesity cluster, you can enable Cloud Tier to move rarely used and inactive data to the cloud when HDD used capacity exceeds a set threshold (typically 80%). To reduce the storage cost and network utilization, down-tiered data is always compressed in addition to being encrypted regardless of the cluster and Storage Domain settings. For deduplication, however, the down-tiered data in the External Target reflects the same deduplication settings as in the Storage Domain on the cluster. Cloud Tier benefits include utilizing low cost cloud storage for rarely used and inactive data, allowing you to reclaim Cohesity cluster capacity for often used data. The actual amount of data that can be tiered to Cloud Tier depends on the deduplication ratio of your data. If the deduplication ratio is high, less data can be tiered to the cloud. As a general guideline, however, Cloud Tier roughly doubles your capacity.

The action steps in the following procedure are represented in the figure below with blue numbered time squares:. The procedure assumes cloud storage is already registered as Cloud Tier and the HDD used capacity is beyond the threshold.

The Cloud Tier process consists of the following actions:

A Cohesity cluster's Storage Domain contains two files, FileA and FileB. Both files contain data blocks that the Cohesity cluster recognizes as cold so it moves the data blocks to the Cloud Tier. Note that files may share data blocks, as indicated by Block#4 in the diagram.
A system accesses FileB data Block#4 and Block#6. The Cohesity cluster recognizes that Block #6 is located on the Cluster and Block#4 is located on the Cloud Tier, but this difference is transparent to the Storage Domain and to the system accessing the file.
If, based on additional file access, the Cohesity cluster determines that Block#4 is no longer cold, that data block is moved from the Cloud Tier to the Cohesity cluster.

Register an External Target

To enable Cloud Tier for a Storage Domain, you must register an External Target in the Cohesity cluster. Registering an External Target makes it eligible to be used by the Cohesity cluster.

For detailed instructions, see Register an External Target.

Enable Cloud Tier

You enable Cloud Tier at the Storage Domain level. For detailed instructions, see Create or Edit Storage Domains.

Dataprotect Documentation