NTT Group subsidiary Dimension Data, which provides IT services, announced the availability of new tiered storage options in its public cloud at this week's EMC World conference in Las Vegas.

Clients can now access three tiers of block-based storage at US$0.07 to $0.44 per GB per month. Different tiers match different levels of protection, performance and accessibility of data to the storage media different applications need.

Steve Nola, cloud solutions business unit CEO at Dimension Data, said, “Dimension Data is committed to providing a high-performance cloud that is easy to use and customize.”

The offering is based on EMC's VNX storage – a high-performing unified storage platform optimized for virtual applications in the cloud. Tiered storage options can be selected and provisioned through a Web-based user interface or API (application programming interface), enabling organizations to change the type of storage required for cloud servers on the fly.

The new service leverages solid state drives to accelerate performance.

Tiered storage is initially available to clients the US (California), Australia and Europe. The service will be rolled out to other regions in the coming months.

The tiers available include:

Tier 1 – High-Performance: 600 GB 15k Drives (RAID 5)

Use Case: Cloud applications that use online active files, database tables, Web and user files

Tier 2 – Standard: 2TB 7200RPM (RAID 5)

Use Case: Cloud applications that use VM/VDI files, online archive videos, photos, backups and snapshots, OS images

Tier 3 – Economy: 3TB 7200RPM (RAID 5)

Use Case: Cloud applications that use offline master backup, disaster recovery, gold copy, archive, long-term retention