Positional indexing for a tiered data storage system

A system comprising:

• a. a storage subsystem including a processing unit, a storage subsystem memory, and a plurality of storage tiers having different performance characteristics;
• b. an offload engine including a processing unit and an offload memory communicatively coupled to the storage subsystem;
• c. computer-executable logic, wherein the computer-executable logic is configured for the execution of:
• i. receiving a first metric associated with a desired percentage of data stored in the offload engine to be categorized as hot data;
• ii. receiving a second metric associated with a desired percentage of data stored in the offload engine to be categorized as cold data;
• iii. copying a sorted array from the storage subsystem to the offload engine;
• iv. separating the sorted array using the offload engine, into first and second partitioned storage sectors, thereby creating a second sorted array, wherein the first partitioned storage sector in the second array contains a plurality of hot data sorted in descending order, and the second partitioned storage sector in the second array contains a plurality of cold data sorted in ascending order;
• and
• v. writing the second sorted array into the storage subsystem memory.

A computer program product for sorting data in a data storage system comprising a storage subsystem, wherein the storage subsystem comprises a processing unit, a storage subsystem memory, and a plurality of storage tiers having differing performance characteristics, and an offload engine, wherein the offload engine comprises a processing unit and an offload memory, the computer program product comprising a non-transitory computer readable medium encoded with computer-executable program code the code configured to enable the execution of:

• a. receiving a first metric associated with a desired percentage of data stored in a sorted array to be categorized as hot data;
• b. receiving a second metric associated with a desired percentage of data stored in the sorted array to be categorized as cold data;
• c. copying the sorted array from the storage subsystem to the offload engine;
• d. separating the sorted array using the offload engine, into first and second partitioned storage sectors, thereby creating a second sorted array, wherein the first partitioned storage sector in the second array contains hot data sorted in descending order, and the second partitioned storage sector contains in the second array cold data sorted in ascending order;
• and
• e. writing the second sorted array into the storage subsystem memory or a database located within the physical storage pool.