Tiered storage has lost some steam among Storage survey respondents in the past year. Forty-nine percent of recent respondents manage a tiered architecture vs. 68% in a similar survey conducted in early 2007. Back then, 78% of those who weren't tiering had plans to implement tiered storage. This time around, 59% plan to adopt tiered storage (46% of those within a year). In our most recent survey, users have largely upgraded to 4Gb/sec Fibre Channel (FC) for Tier 1: 62% now use 4Gb/sec FC for their top tier vs. 34% in 2007. Solid-state drives might finally be making headway, with 12% of those surveyed using the technology as Tier 0. However, tiered storage gets mixed reactions; it's "definitely not for the faint of heart," says one respondent, while another praises the concept but adds that "all aspects of management of multiple tiers could be much easier." The biggest pain point? Classifying data so that it's sent to the right tier. --Christine Cignoli