What purpose do Smartpools serve in PowerScale?

SmartPools in PowerScale are designed to optimize data management by tiering data across different types of nodes. This functionality allows organizations to effectively distribute data based on its usage patterns, performance requirements, and storage needs. By utilizing SmartPools, data can be automatically migrated to the most appropriate storage tier, ensuring that frequently accessed data resides on high-performance storage while infrequently used data can be placed on more cost-effective options. This intelligent tiering enhances overall system performance and efficiency, enabling better resource allocation and management within the storage architecture.

The other options serve different purposes: improving network speed does not specifically relate to SmartPools; while reducing hardware costs might be a secondary benefit of effective tiering, it is not the primary function; creating backup copies is not a function of SmartPools, as they are focused on data tiering rather than backup solutions.