EMC has unveiled its fully automated storage tiering (FAST) vision technology, which automates the movement of data within a storage system, replacing repetitive, manual storage administrative tasks.

The Hopkinton, Mass-based EMC said that FAST is designed to combine capabilities including sub-LUN tiering, capacity allocation on demand, block and file level deduplication, data compression, disk drive spin down, built-in archiving and private and public cloud federation to provide unprecedented levels of automation, management and cost efficiencies.

According to the company, the first phase of EMC FAST technology is available immediately for new and existing EMC Symmetrix V-Max and EMC CLARiiON CX4 networked storage systems and EMC Celerra NS unified storage systems. Capabilities include:

• The ability to create and apply tiering policies to automate the control, placement and movement of data within the storage system based on business needs.

• Built-in software to monitor, analyze and respond to changes in the value and access patterns of the data.
• Policies that enable users to define tiering rules to support service-level requirements automatically or with administrator approval.
• File system capabilities that permit integration with internal private clouds and external cloud service providers.

Additional phases of EMC's FAST technology will roll out beginning in 2010.