I’ve created extension, based on ArrayModel (http://www.yiiframework.com/extension/arraymodel) - the FileModel. It is almost same as parent, but allows to store data in yaml and json format, not only php dumps. It could be suitable when some data generated by external tool(my case), or when same data must be used on client side via ajax.
I’ve used spyc, as yaml library, for simple deploying, it is not as fast as Syck, but if you got stuck with speed here, maybe it will be better to use database instead of file.