US Patent 10097634 Storage tier selection for replication and recovery

Disclosed herein are methods, systems, and processes to select storage tiers for data replication and data recovery. A replication stream is received from a replication appliance that is configured to replicate data to a storage tier of multiple storage tiers. Each storage tier differs from at least one other storage tier in at least one storage characteristic. Portions of the replication stream are identified based on input/output (I/O) characteristics. The portions are stored in one storage tier other than the storage tier based on the I/O characteristics, and a storage cost associated with each storage tier, where the storage cost associated with each storage tier is based on storage characteristics of each storage tier.