// Hacker Noon · 24 January 2026

HSM: The Original Tiering Engine Behind Mainframes, Cloud, and S3

Hierarchical Storage Management (HSM) is the storage world’s oldest magic trick. It makes expensive storage look bigger by quietly moving data to cheaper tiers. HSM has five moving parts: a primary tier, secondary tiers, a policy engine, a recall mechanism, and a migration engine.

Hacker Noon

@hacker-noon · Carl Watts

hackernoon.com

Hacker Noon@hacker-noon