Having different levels of storage in the overall archive is an important requirement of the modern broadcast facility. The storage location of a clip within the archive is highly dependent on its content. Some clips may be required on a frequent basis and thus remain locally stored on disk (video server or locally-attached central storage, such as RAID); other clips, which are not required for playout in the foreseeable future, can be moved from local storage to a deeper part of the archive, usually to removable media such as tape or disk (DVD).

Storing clips based on their content is a highly effective means of keeping media costs to a minimum, and ensures that local storage is managed in the most efficient way possible; video servers and attached disk storage are never clogged with unnecessary data, and capacity is always available for important clips that are required immediately and/or on a regular basis.

StorageManager's LifeCycle module automatically moves or copies data to different areas of the archive, based on rules specified by the user. Rules are defined for specific media groups, and are based around clip attributes: data age, clip size and the amount of time since the clip was last restored. Rules can contain any combination of attributes: for example, a user can move clips of a certain file size that have not been restored for a certain time.

LifeCycle uses the SGL daemon defragd to instigate the move and copy operations (the Defrag module is installed as part of the LifeCycle installation). Defragd runs as a background process, and continually evaluates the groups defined in the movement rules. When clips within the group become eligible for movement based on those rules, defragd instructs FlashNet to restore the clip to a local cache, and then re-archive the clip to the new location. The FlashNet metadata is then updated; this means that throughout the movement process the clip is available to the entire archive and automation system. There is no 'down time'.

LifeCycle can be further configured so that it only runs at certain times of the day, and only uses a certain number of drives within the library. This ensures that the day-to-day operations of the archive are not affected, and that drives will always be available for restore of urgently required clips.