Fine grained tiered storage with thin provisioning

1. A method for managing data, comprising:

providing at least one logical device having a table of information that maps sections of the logical device to sections of at least two storage areas, wherein the table of information identifies sections of the logical device for which no corresponding physical storage space of the at least two storage areas has yet been allocated, the table of information indicating physical storage space that is available on the at least two storage areas even though the corresponding physical storage space has not yet been allocated;

evaluating characteristics of data associated with at least one of the sections of the logical device;

moving the at least one of the sections of the logical device between the at least two storage areas according to a policy and according to characteristics of the data identified in the table of information, wherein each of the at least two storage areas corresponds to a different storage tier and wherein the table of information includes an indication for each of the storage tiers that identifies at least one characteristic for each of the storage tiers, the characteristic being different for each of the at least two storage areas; and

updating the table of information according to the movement of data between the at least two storage areas.

2. The method as recited in claim 1 , further comprising:

in response to a request for accessing data associated with the logical device, determining a location of the data on the at least two storage areas and accessing the data on the particular one of the storage areas using the table of information.

3. The method as recited in claim 1 , further comprising:

in response to a request for writing new data to the logical device, determining a preferred location for the new data on at least one of the at least two storage areas and writing the new data to at least one of the at least two storage areas, wherein the preferred location is determined according to a write target policy.

4. The method as recited in claim 1 , further comprising:

mirroring the same data on a plurality of the at least two storage areas.

5. The method as recited in claim 1 , wherein at least one of the storage tiers corresponds to an external storage device.

6. The method as recited in claim 1 , wherein the data includes a data block that is less than an entire file, dataset or database.

7. The method as recited in claim 1 , wherein the characteristics of the data include at least one of: frequency of use of the data, a time of last use of the data, access patterns and inter-dependent accesses to other data, source information associated with the data and requestor information associated with the data, file name, file type and data type.

8. The method as recited in claim 1 , wherein the moving data between the at least two storage areas is performed automatically according to at least one of: periodically, after a trigger event and initiated by a user or an administrator.

9. The method as recited in claim 1 , wherein the policy includes criteria for managing data according to at least one of: frequency of use of the data, a time of last use of the data, a size of the data block, source information associated with the data and requestor information associated with the data, file name, file type and data type.

10. The method as recited in claim 1 , wherein the logical device includes a thin device and each of the at least two storage areas includes a data device.

11. The method as recited in claim 1 , further comprising:

providing another logical device that is served by a same pool of data devices as the at least one logical device.

12. A system including at least one processor that performs the steps recited in claim 1 .

13. A non-transitory computer readable medium including executable code that performs the steps recited in claim 1 .

14. A method for managing data, comprising:

providing at least one logical device having a table of information that maps sections of the logical device to sections of at least two storage areas, wherein the table of information identifies sections of the logical device for which no corresponding physical storage space of the at least two storage areas has yet been allocated, the table of information indicating physical storage space that is available on the at least two storage areas even though the corresponding physical storage space has not yet been allocated;

evaluating characteristics of data associated with at least one of the sections of the logical device;

in response to a request for writing new data to the logical device, determining a preferred location for the new data on at least one of the at least two storage areas and writing the new data to at least one of the at least two storage areas, wherein the preferred location is determined according to the characteristics of data identified in the table of information and according to an indication of a characteristic for each of the at least two storage areas, the characteristic being different for each of the at least two storage areas; and

updating the table of information according to the writing of the data to the at least one of the at least two storage areas.

15. The method as recited in claim 14 , further comprising:

in response to a request for accessing data associated with the logical device, determining a location of the data on the at least two storage areas and accessing the data on the particular one of the storage areas using the table of information.

16. The method as recited in claim 14 , wherein the data includes a data block that is less than an entire file, dataset or database.

17. The method as recited in claim 14 , wherein the policy includes criteria for managing data according to at least one of: frequency of use of the data, a time of last use of the data, source information associated with the data and requestor information associated with the data, file name, file type and data type.

18. A system including at least one processor that performs the steps recited in claim 14 .

19. A non-transitory computer readable medium including executable code that performs the steps recited in claim 14 .

20. A computer storage device, comprising:

a plurality of interconnected directors, wherein at least some of the directors handle reading and writing data for the computer storage device;

a plurality of disk drives, coupled to at least some of the directors, that store data for the computer storage device; and

computer software, provided on a computer readable medium of at least one of the directors, having executable code that provides at least one logical device having a table of information that maps sections of the logical device to sections of at least two storage areas associated with the disk drives, wherein the table of information identifies sections of the logical device for which no corresponding physical storage space of the at least two storage areas has yet been allocated, the table of information indicating physical storage space that is available on the at least two storage areas even though the corresponding physical storage space has not yet been allocated; executable code that evaluates characteristics of the data associated with at least one section of the logical device; executable code that moves the at least one section of the logical device between the at least two storage areas according to a policy and according to characteristics of the data identified in the table of information, wherein each of the at least two storage areas corresponds to a different storage tier and wherein the table of information includes an indication for each of the storage tiers that identifies at least one characteristic for each of the storage tiers, the characteristic being different for each of the at least two storage areas; and executable code that updates the table of information according to the movement of data between the at least two storage areas.