US Patent 10380078 Dynamic storage tiering in a virtual environment

Various systems and methods for performing dynamic storage tiering in a virtual environment. For example, one method can involve identifying a location of a storage object within a virtual machine file, where the virtual machine file includes multiple storage objects. The method then involves detecting whether the storage object meets a criterion of a tiering policy. If the storage object meets the criterion, the storage object is moved from one tier of a multi-tier storage system to another tier of the multi-tier storage system.