Cloud tiering is a technology that automatically moves inactive or infrequently accessed data from high-performance primary storage to lower-cost secondary storage, such as cloud-based object storage. This process is based on policies that are defined by the IT administrator. Cloud tiering is a part of the secondary storage tier, which is typically used for storing inactive or infrequently accessed data that does not require the high performance or low latency of primary storage. The primary storage tier is used for storing active or frequently accessed data that requires high performance and low latency. The application tier is used for hosting applications and services, while the policy tier is used for defining and enforcing data management policies. Reference: Section 4.4 Secondary Storage Tier, page 239.

An OSD storage system is an object-based storage system that stores data as objects rather than files or blocks1. An OSD storage system consists of OSD nodes that have two key services: metadata service and storage service1.

The metadata service is responsible for generating the object ID from the contents of a file1. The object ID is a unique identifier that represents the data and its attributes. The metadata service also maintains the mapping of the object IDs and the file system namespace1. The file system namespace is a logical structure that organizes files into directories and subdirectories.

The storage service manages a set of disks on which the user data is stored1. The storage service stores data as objects in physical OSD containers. Each OSD container has a unique address that corresponds to an object ID. The storage service also handles requests from clients to read or write data to or from objects.

This is an example of an image-based data protection method. With image-based data protection, a proxy server regularly takes Point-in-Time (PIT) snapshots of the virtual machine (VM) that is being protected. These snapshots are then stored in a secure location, allowing the user to quickly restore access to the VM in the event of a hardware failure. This type of data protection is effective for preserving the state of the VM, as well as any data stored on it, making it a reliable and secure way to protect data.