Data Management Glossary
Hybrid Tiering
What is Hybrid Tiering?
Hybrid Tiering, or Hybrid File Tiering, is a storage-agnostic approach to data tiering that all organizations to establish fine-grained data management policies beyond the built-in cold data tiering limits often provided by data storage vendors. In addition to greater flexibility, hybrid tiering approaches offer the benefits of data portability without rehydration and no limits to innovation and cost savings by easily moving specific cold data sets to lower cost, deeper data storage solutions from other vendors (e.g. AWS Glacier, Wasabi, etc.).
Why is tiering important now?
With unstructured data making up 90% of enterprise data, and most of it going cold within months, data tiering is essential to cut storage, backup, and ransomware defense costs while keeping data accessible.
How does hybrid tiering differ from storage-based tiering?
Storage-based tiering typically works within a single vendor’s system and can lock data into proprietary formats. Hybrid tiering works across heterogeneous storage, avoids vendor lock-in, and ensures cloud-native access to tiered data.
How does hybrid tiering improve ransomware defense?
By offloading cold data from the active footprint and leveraging object-locked destinations, hybrid tiering reduces the ransomware attack surface by up to 70% and ensures intact recovery copies.
What is rehydration, and how does hybrid tiering prevent it?
Rehydration happens when data must be pulled back into expensive storage during a hardware refresh or vendor migration. Hybrid tiering avoids this by maintaining file fidelity and portability across storage platforms.
Can I create flexible tiering policies with Hybrid Tiering?
Yes. Unlike storage-based tiering with rigid rules, hybrid tiering lets you set layered policies, for example, moving data after 6 months to cloud storage, and after 2 years to archival tiers, without disrupting users or applications. Learn more about why storage-agnostic unstructured data management.
What is Transparent Move Technology (TMT)?
TMT is patented Komprise technology that leaves dynamic links behind so users and applications continue accessing files from their original locations, even after data has been tiered.
How does hybrid tiering support cloud innovation?
Hybrid tiering provides cloud-native data access, enabling you to use all cloud tiers efficiently and integrate directly with analytics, AI, and other cloud services.
Why is hybrid tiering important for AI?
AI requires broad, indexed access to unstructured data. Hybrid tiering ensures data is not locked in proprietary formats, making it accessible, searchable, and AI-ready with proper governance and compliance.
What kind of cost savings can hybrid tiering deliver?
In a 1PB scenario, Komprise hybrid tiering cut annual costs by 75% compared to storage-based tiering, reducing spend on storage, backup, and ransomware defense.
What are some considerations when picking a tiering solution?
Does the tiering solution reduce your ransomware attack surface?
By moving cold data off expensive active storage and into object-locked destinations, hybrid tiering shrinks the attack surface, cutting ransomware risk by up to 70% while lowering defense costs.
Does the tiering solution avoid rehydration when refreshing storage?
Since data often outlives storage hardware, hybrid tiering prevents costly “rehydration” during vendor or hardware refreshes by keeping files portable and storage-agnostic.
Does the tiering solution provide flexible data management policies without disruption?
Hybrid tiering lets you set layered, customized data movement policies (e.g., 6 months, 2 years, archival) without user disruption, thanks to Transparent Move Technology that maintains seamless file access.
Does the tiering solution deliver cloud-dative data access?
Unlike proprietary storage tiering, hybrid tiering ensures data is natively accessible in the cloud, enabling use of lower-cost storage tiers and direct integration with cloud analytics, AI, and other services.
Does the tiering solution deliver AI-ready data?
With AI relying heavily on unstructured data, hybrid tiering ensures tiered data remains searchable, governed, and available for AI workflows—avoiding vendor lock-in and improving AI outcomes.
