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Down-Tier Data
21 October 2024 10 min read

Down-tiering involves the following steps:

1. Register the NAS Source

2. Analyze the Source

3. Plan Tiering

4. Configure a Down-Tiering Task

Register the NAS Source

To down-tier data from the NAS primary storage to the Cohesity cluster, you must first
register the NAS as a source with the Cohesity cluster.

To register NAS:

1. Navigate to SmartFiles > NAS Tiering.

2. Click Add in the upper-right corner of the page and select Register New Source.
The Register NAS dialog is displayed and Generic NAS is automatically selected in the
Type field:
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3. Select the Mode—NFS or SMB.

4. If you select SMB, provide the following details:

Username—SMB mount credentials that allow reading, writing, and backing up of

files.

Password—SMB mount credentials that allow reading and backing up of files.

Note:

For down-tiering, the user must have read, write, and backup permissions.
For up-tiering, the user must have Full Control permissions.

5. Mount Path—The path for mounting the NAS. Use the following format:

NFS—Hostname or IP:/Volume

SMB—\\Hostname or IP\Share path

Note:

Do not edit an existing mount path. If you need to change the mount path,
register the mount path as a new source.

6. Optionally, you can skip mount point validation during registration.

7. Description—Optionally, you can enter a description for identifying the mount path.

8. Click Register.
Once the registration is complete, the NAS source appears on the NAS Tiering page. You
can now analyze the data on the source.

Analyze the Source

Once you register the source, you can analyze the data on the source. After the analysis is
done by default the data on the source is classified on the basis of the following categories
done, by default, the data on the source is classified on the basis of the following categories
or parameters: Home SmartFiles (File and Object Services) NAS Tiering Down-Tier
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File Size—Files are organized into groups based on the size of the file.

File Type—Files are organized into groups based on the file type such as text, audio, and
database.

Date of Last Access—Files are organized into groups based on the last date on which the
data was accessed.

When you plan to tier, the Cohesity cluster displays the histogram based on the groups of
these categories. You can choose to view the histogram either based on the file type or file
size, and the data is displayed against the date of the last access grouping (x-axis). To
customize the buckets of these categories, see Edit Grouping.

To analyze the source, on the NAS Tiering page, click Analyze for the source you registered.

The analysis process is initiated.

If you are performing analysis on an SMB source that has reparse points, which includes
NTFS symbolic link to files or directories and Directory Junction Point, the analysis task
crashes.

Depending on the number of files and directories on the source, it can take some time
to complete the analysis process.

Refresh Analysis
To refresh the analysis done on the data of the source:

1. On the NAS Tiering page, go to the Tiering by Source pane.

2. Click the Actions menu (⋮) corresponding to the source you analyzed:

3. Click Refresh Analysis.

 The data on the source is analyzed again.
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Edit Grouping
Once the initial analysis is complete, you can optionally customize the grouping within each
category. By default, the data is grouped into Hot, Warm, or Cold. Once you customize the
existing groups, a new analysis task is triggered. This analysis is performed on the basis of the
new grouping. When you plan to tier, the Cohesity cluster will display the histogram based
on the updated grouping.

To edit the grouping:

1. On the NAS Tiering page, go to the Tiering by Source pane.

2. Click the Actions menu (⋮) corresponding to the source you analyzed:

3. Click Edit Grouping.

The Edit Grouping dialog is displayed:

4. Hover over the group that you want to update, click the edit icon, and update grouping:

Date of Last Access

Date of Last Modified

File Sizes

File Types

5. Click Analyze.
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The data accessed within the defined range are grouped and displayed on the Select Data To
Tier page. To update a group, you can do one of the following:

Click on the defined range and update the value

Move the slider and update the value

Date of Last Modified

The data modified within the defined range are grouped and displayed on the Select Data To
Tier page. To update a group, you can do one of the following:

Click on the defined range and update the value

Move the slider and update the value

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File Sizes

The files within this defined file size range are grouped and displayed on the Select Data To
Tier page. To update a group, you can do one of the following:

Click on the defined range and update the value

Move the slider and update the value

File Types

The files based on the category are grouped and displayed on the Select Data To Tier page.
Click on a category to enter the extension of the file format you want to group under this
category. You cannot enter an extension that is already a part of another file category.
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Delete Analysis
To delete the data analysis done on the source:

1. On the NAS Tiering page, go to the Tiering by Source pane.

2. Click the Actions menu (⋮) corresponding to the source you analyzed:

3. Click Delete Analysis.

The Delete Analysis dialog is displayed.

4. Click Delete to confirm your action:

Edit Analysis Schedule
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You can edit the schedule on an analysis run.

To edit the analysis schedule:

1. On the NAS Tiering page, go to the Tiering by Source pane.

2. Click the Actions menu (⋮) corresponding to the source you analyzed:

3. Click Edit Analysis Schedule.

4. The Edit Analysis Schedule dialog is displayed:

5. Modify the schedule as necessary and click Edit to save the changes.

Plan Tiering
Once the analysis is complete, based on the data analysis done, you can plan the tiering for
your data on the NAS source. To plan data tiering to the Cohesity cluster, click the Plan
Tiering option that appears once you complete the analysis:
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Plan tiering involves the following steps:

Select Data To Tier

Configure a Down-Tiering Task

Select Data To Tier

After you click Plan Tiering, the Select Data To Tier page is displayed. This page displays the
name of the registered source and includes the following sections:

Select Data To Tier

Selection Summary

Data Distribution Chart

Data per Share

Select Data To Tier

In the Select Data To Tier section, you can select the files to tier. By default, the filters are set
as follows:

Scanned Objects—All

File Accessed—Warm and Cold

File Modified—All

File Size—All

File Type—All

You can modify the filters and select the data you want to tier. For example, if you have
selected File Accessed as greater than six months, File Size as greater than 1GiB, and File
Type as Video, video files greater than 1GiB that were accessed before six months are down-
tiered:
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Important:

The combination works as an AND operation.

Selection Summary

The Selection Summary section displays the summary:

Total size of scanned data

Size of data that will be tiered

Number of scanned files

Number of files that will be tiered

Data Distribution Chart

The Data Distribution chart provides a graphical representation of the data (histogram)
available on the source by distribution and group.

The following is an illustration of the data distribution by file accessed and grouped by file
size. Hover over the chart to view granular details:
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Data per Share Data

The Data per Share section displays the following data per share:

Name of the share

Scanned data

Data to tier

Scanned files

Number of files to tier

Note:

Cohesity currently supports only one share per source. If you want to include
another share, you must register the share as a new source.

Click Continue to navigate to the Configure Tiering Task page.

Configure a Down-Tiering Task

To configure a down-tiering task, complete the steps described in the Select Data To Tier
section and proceed:

1. In the Task Name section:

Enter a name for the tiering task

Optionally, enter a description.

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2. View the selected data to tier. The Selected Data To Tier section is read-only and displays
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the data that you selected in the Select Data to Tier section:

3. Select a storage domain where you would want the target View to be created.

4. Enter a name for the target View that will be created.

5. Task Schedule—Schedule the tiering task, by default it is set to Daily.

6. Retain Snapshots—Specify the number of days the snapshots are retained on the
Cohesity cluster. At the end of each task run, a snapshot of the View is captured. This
snapshot is retained for the number of days specified.

7. Select one of the following Symbolic Links options:

Tier with symbolic links—Select this option if you want to create symbolic links when
data is tiered. When data is tiered from the primary storage, symbolic links are
substituted in place of the original file. The name of this symbolic link is the same as
that of the original file, ensuring that users and applications continue to access the
data as before.

Note:

If you use the Tier with symbolic links option, you cannot use Mac clients to
access data tiered with symbolic links.

Tier without symbolic links—Select this option if you do not want to create symbolic
links when data is tiered. You can select this option if no user or application will
access the data on the source and you are permanently moving the unused data to
 the Cohesity cluster.
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8. Click More Options to view additional settings.
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9. Audit Logging—Enable this option if you want to log the information of the data down-
tiered. You can also check the logs related to the symlinks created by the down-tiering
task and the files that are renamed or deleted. The audit log file is saved in the
tiering_audit directory of the COHESITY_AUDIT_VIEW View. You can access this file by
mounting the View as NFS share: <cluster_ip>:/COHESITY_AUDIT_VIEW.

10. Tiering Goal—Turn on the Set Share Capacity Limit toggle to set the amount of data you
want to retain at the source. Depending on the value you set, Cohesity provides a
recommendation for tiering data based on the last accessed date:

11. QoS Policy—Select an appropriate Quality of Service (QoS) Policy:

Backup HDD—The Cohesity cluster writes the data directly to an HDD drive for this
tiering task.

Backup SSD—The Cohesity cluster writes the data directly to an SSD drive for this
tiering task. Specify this policy only if you need fast ingest speed for a small number
of tiering tasks.

Note:

Cohesity recommends specifying a Backup HDD, which is the default.

12. Indexing—Enable this option to index the data of the tiering task. Indexing improves files
and folder search. By default, a rule to include the root directory (/) is defined, and
therefore by default, the entire file system is indexed. Indexing is recursive, so if a
directory is indexed, all of the child subdirectories are also indexed.

13. Alerts—Select one or more of the following settings if you want alerts to be created for
the following triggers: Success, Failure, or SLA Violation.
Email Recipients—Click Add and enter an email address to the tiering task to notify the
email recipients when alerts are triggered for the task.

Note:

Emails are not sent when informational alerts are created.

14. Click Create.

 The summary dialog displays the details of the tiering task and the estimated capacity
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savings on source:
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15. Click Submit.

The down-tiering task is created and will run at the specified scheduled time.

Tiering Audit
Enable the Tiering Audit option at the cluster level and the Audit Logging option in the
down-tiering task to record details about the downtiered data. This includes logs for created
symlinks and files that have been renamed or deleted during the down-tiering process. The
audit log file is stored in the `tiering_audit` directory within the `COHESITY_AUDIT_VIEW`
View. Mount the View as an NFS share at `<cluster_ip>:/COHESITY_AUDIT_VIEW` to
access this file.

The following is an example audit log of a file that was down-tiered:

Copy

{"Timestamp" : "2024-07-23T06:10:04.314Z", "TieringAction" : "DownTier",

"RemoteShare" : "10 14 59 185:/source view" "ViewName" : "target view"
 RemoteShare : 10.14.59.185:/source_view , ViewName : target_view ,
"EntityPath" : "/err.txt", "EntityModifyTimestamp" : "2024-07-
23T06:09:50.491Z", "EntityAccessTimestamp"
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"2024-07-23T06:09:50.535Z",
Services) NAS Tiering Down-Tier
"EntityMode" : 33152, "EntityUserID" : 0, "EntityGroupID" : 0,
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"EntitySize" : 3, "EntityInode" : 154514, "JobName" : "tier"}

Enable Tiering Audit at the Cluster Level

To enable tiering audit logs at the cluster level:

1. Navigate to System > Audit Logs > Log Settings.

2. Turn on the Tiering Audit toggle:

3. Update the log retention period as required.

4. Click Save.

Enable Audit Logs in the Down-Tiering Task

You can enable tiering audit logs for each down-tiering task when creating or modifying a
tiering job. Complete the following steps:

1. Navigate to SmartFiles > NAS Tiering.

2. In the Tiering by Source section, locate the registered source for which you want to
enable audit logging:

To enable audit logging while creating a new tiering job, click Plan Tiering and Select
Data To Tier.

To enable audit logging for an existing tiering job, hover over the job name and
select Edit. On the Select Data To Tier page, click Continue.

3. Click More Options and turn on the Audit Logging option:

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4. Click Create if you are creating a new job or Edit if you are modifying an existing job.