Step-by-step guide for applying your assessment report results to your storage and data management strategy
Introduction
A storage assessment report contains comprehensive file analytics which can help you meet even the most demanding data management goals, cut down on storage costs, and build a future-proof digital transformation strategy.
Tiger Technology’s Storage Assessment Report service is specifically designed to give you statistics about the number, size, and total size of your accessed, modified and created files.
Order and Install
To use the Storage Assessment Report, you need to purchase it on the Tiger Technology website and install the Storage Assessment Data Collection Tool.
For more information, see the following video.
For best results, use the report with a storage device which has been active for at least one year.
Optimize and Scale Storage with Tiger Bridge
Configuring Tiger Bridge based on your report allows you to take advantage of several additional features and get even more insights about your data.
Tiger Bridge is a non-proprietary, software-only data management solution which blends on-premises and multi-tier, multi-cloud storage to enable hybrid cloud workflows.
Check out our YouTube channel for more information.
For the purposes of this guide, we’ve divided the Assessment Report utilization in two sections:
- Report Overview
- Tiger Bridge Configuration
Report Overview
You can generate reports about a specific storage device or just a folder оn it. The storage device can be an NTFS/ReFS volume or an SMB/NFS share.
As a result, you will get various statistics related to how many files your analyzed storage has, their size, and what portion of them are accessed, modified or created.
Insights
Let’s take a closer look at the report’s output:
- Date
A storage assessment report can reveal data usage for selected periods of time.
On the left of the screen, you can apply one of the available filters for years, months, weeks, and days, or completely personalize the time range.
Note that every time you change the dates your report covers, some statistics will be updated to fit the new time frame.
- Totals
Here, you can see the size of all files on the analyzed storage, their number and the folders it has.
- Key Metrics
This field shows how many of the disk’s files are accessed, modified, and created. In addition, it calculates their size and what percentage they comprise out of the total file size.
The amount of local space you can free on your disk is determined by deducting the size of the accessed files from the total file size on your storage.
These results could also predict the costs for storing your data in the cloud.
- Last Access and Average Created Size
If you compare these graphs, you may get matching patterns - a peak in both file access and file creation at the same point in time.
The more similar the patterns, the better suited the data will be for using an archive cloud tier.
- Daily Averages (GB)
Here, you can find the average daily and maximum daily size of all accessed, modified and created files. To see how much data will be replicated daily to the cloud, add the metrics for modified files to the metrics for created files.
The size of modified files in the Key Metrics section reveals how much versioning data will be stored on your cloud target on a yearly basis for a single version of each file.
The versioning data uploaded on a daily basis is calculated with the help of the average file size of modified files from the Daily Averages section.
- Sub-folder Details
In this portion of the report, you can see the size of each sub-folder on your disk, its percentage value of its parent, the number of files it has, and how many of them are accessed in terms of size and percentage.
Note that all sub-folders of your analyzed path should generate similar-looking stats in order to draw a general conclusion about the parent folder.
Even one sub-folder can lead you to make a wrong conclusion about its parent folder.
- Top Extensions
Here, you can view the top seven file extensions of your analyzed path ordered by total size. You will also see what percentage and size of them are accessed.
Using Tiger Bridge with Your Report
If you configure a source in your Tiger Bridge installation, all of its files, including sub-folder files, will be managed based on the policies you set for replication, space reclaiming and archiving.
Your Storage Assessment Report can be used to generate statistics about the source drive’s folders. You have the option to apply automatic data management policies to all of them or configure separate sources for different folders.
In addition, each sub-folder of an analyzed path can be managed by Tiger Bridge automatically or added as an excluded location for manual data management.
Replication Policy
Depending on your workflow, you can configure replication of all data as soon as possible, or synchronization of the replication of data with its removal from the local storage.
To adjust the Replication Policy to the Storage Assessment Report, take a look at Key Metrics and compare the number and size of Modified files for different time ranges.
Reclaim Space Policy
You can use this policy to decide which space will be freed by moving the data from the local storage to a target location based on its size and/or the time it was last accessed.
To use the Reclaim Space Policy with your Storage Assessment Report, navigate to the Key Metrics section and look at the Accessed files statistics. The values there may indicate whether you’ll need to retrieve a file from the target in order to access it.
In addition, the Average Modified Size and Average Created Size statistics can reveal how big a file should be to free the needed space on your local storage by moving it to cloud storage.
Using the results for expected data growth from the report, you can configure the rest of the Reclaiming Space Policy settings in Tiger Bridge.
Archive Policy
You can use this policy to decide which data will be archived based on how long it hasn’t been accessed and/or whether it’s bigger than a certain size.
To use the Archive Policy with your Storage Assessment Report, navigate to the Accessed files statistics of the Key Metrics section. The values there can help you decide which files should be moved to the archival tier without remaining ready for retrieval except in the event of a disaster.
The Average Modified Size and Average Created Size graphs can determine how big a file should be to free the needed space on your local storage by moving it to cloud storage.
Ransomware Protection
Tiger Bridge allows you to stop the replication of files which have been encrypted on your source due to a ransomware attack. To configure this setting, you need to be familiar with the maximum file modification rate of your organization.
In the Last Access graph of the Storage Assessment Report, find a peak day and click on it once to update other statistics with data for it.
Then, navigate to the Key Metrics section and look at the number of modified files. This is the approximate maximum modification rate. Anything above it could be proof that your data is suffering from a ransomware attack.
Additional Features
You can use Tiger Bridge’s shell extension and command line interface to perform lifecycle management operations on certain data. This allows you to schedule tasks for execution by inserting commands in a script.
Using the report’s insights about peak data access over a specific time can help you schedule Tiger Bridge to replicate files in a way that benefits your organization’s workflow.
Conclusion
The Tiger Technology Storage Assessment Report provides detailed statistics about storage devices. Based on these insights, you can manage your data easily and free space on your local disk by deciding which files should be moved to the cloud.
Tiger Bridge’s policies for data replication, space reclaiming and archiving, as well as its ransomware protection capability, allow you to maximize the benefits of your report.
To see the video version of this guide, please use the following link.
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About Tiger Technology
Founded in 2003 and headquartered in Sofia, Bulgaria and Alpharetta, GA, USA, Tiger Technology is a file data services company that specializes in on-premises-first hybrid cloud workflows. The company develops data management software solutions designed to help customers with mission-critical deployments optimize their on-premises storage and enhance their workflows through cloud services. Tiger Technology solutions are admin-friendly, non-disruptive, transparent, and highly cost-effective.
Tiger Technology brings over 15 years of expertise in developing high-performance storage solutions for the most demanding workflows, which includes cross-platform NAS/SAN file system sharing, storage, user, project, and media management.
Throughout the years and the multitude of changes in IT and the digital landscape, Tiger Technology has chosen the path of growth and continual improvement, but it has never lost sight of what it all starts with - data.
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