US Patent 8996808 Enhancing tiering storage performance

Various embodiments for improving data storage and retrieval performance, for a tiered storage environment having levels corresponding to storage performance, are provided. In one embodiment, by way of example only, reference count information of at least one data segment maintained in the tiered storage environment is used to determine which of the levels in the tiered storage environment the at least one data segment will be assigned. Those of the at least one data segment having higher reference counts are assigned to a higher performance level than those having lower reference counts.