Entries categorized under “Data Retention”

Knowing how long to keep copies of production data in backup repositories is a problem that companies only give scant attention to now. When companies back up production data to tape, they tend to only invest minimal time and effort managing the data after it is backed up. The backup data remains on the tape until the data is overwritten during the next backup job; or the tape, and data on it, is simply discarded when the tape wears out. Besides, taking a more proactive approach to managing backup data on tape is time consuming, difficult to implement and has, to date, shown minimal return on investment (ROI). (read more)

Backup to disk is fundamentally changing corporate perceptions about backup and recovery. Using disk as a primary backup target has solved long-standing corporate backup problems including successfully completing backups within designated backup windows and expediting recoveries while deduplication is resolving the cost and capacity issues associated with storing backup data on disk. But before companies breathe a collective sigh of relief and think that disk has officially solved their backup problems, they need to think again. The immediate crisis may be over but longer term problems still remain. (read more)

WORM (Write Once Read Many) technology is often viewed by users as a ubiquitous technology. Though WORM is available on many types of storage systems today (whether they use disk, tape or optical), a company may fail to fully recognize or comprehend that about the only aspect of WORM that these storage system vendors agree upon is the words that comprise the acronym WORM. Beyond that, how WORM is implemented and managed long term on each storage system can vary significantly. (read more)

Right now commercial data stores are on track to achieve the petascale range sooner rather than later. According to multiple sources, data collected and stored is doubling every year for most businesses; a rate of growth that has held fairly constant over time. In the 1990s, a 100 GB database was large enough to stress most systems - back when disk scanning speeds were 30 MB/s and database tools were relatively immature. In the current decade, terascale data stores are already common - and managing 100 GB is now considered somewhat trivial. In the coming decade, truly massive petascale systems can be expected to dwarf today's large multi-terabyte stores - requiring a similar leap in the technology being used to store and retrieve the data. (read more)

In looking back at the earliest generations of Information Lifecycle Management (ILM), Business Analytics and Data Loss Prevention (DLP) products, we can see a wasteland of interesting technology that was too early for the market. We are now seeing the hints of resurgence in products adjacent to enterprise discovery based on the 'secondary benefits' of corporate archiving, preservation and collection. Basically, corporations seem to be recognizing that the infrastructure required to establish an efficient, defensible discovery process can and should be leveraged to provide other business functionality. (read more)

One would think that at some point organizations would reach the tipping point for storage consumption and that year-over-year storage capacity growth rates of 30%, 50%, 100% or more would come to an end, or at least slow down. If so, it hasn't occurred yet and, if anything, it shows every sign of continuing for the foreseeable future. Nowhere is this more evident than with the amount of data that companies need to archive and retain. (read more)

The Computerworld column I wrote a few weeks ago on the topic of "A Bit of a Flaw with SATA disk drives" sparked quite a bit of debate around just how safe is data on today's RAID-based storage systems that use SATA disk drives? A series of comments appeared on Computerworld's site where the column appeared as well as on a forum at Nabble's web site. Also, at least one storage system vendor felt obligated to send me their white paper that explains how its RAID-based storage system accounts for this bit error rate problem on SATA disk drives. (read more)

In this entry, David explains why an appropriately configured Data Collector is so important to data protection and information recovery and what features Asigra has introduced into Televaulting in time to ensure its Data Collectors are appropriately configured in order to optimize the management and placement of data long term. David also shares his views on the use of removable media in data protection and information recovery. (read more)

It's 2008 and one would think that disk-based storage systems are beyond the point of catastrophic outages and/or data loss as a result of disk drive failures. The prevalent use of RAID in storage systems for disk drive protection in its many forms would seem like ample insurance against the loss of data. However a careful examination of the facts exposes the flaws in assuming that RAID alone is sufficient as a means of data protection; especially when used in conjunction with today's high capacity SATA disk drives. (read more)

Hard-disk drive storage is taking center stage as the preferred media for enterprise archiving, data protection and information recovery needs. But as the shift to using disk for long term data storage needs occurs, companies are coming to realize that the software that they have relied on for years is, in many instances, poorly equipped to deal with the management of hard-disks as part of their larger data management scheme. Optimizing the placement of data on hard-disks, replicating data to disk storage systems at different sites and then recovering the data are new challenges that companies face as they introduce larger capacity hard-disks into their environment. (read more)

However as companies move towards archiving data on disk-based storage systems, you can't just always build bigger buildings or knock down walls. If anything, companies want to store more data in a smaller footprint. Making it more complicated, companies are creating exponentially more data than they were 10, 5 and even 2 years ago and keeping it for longer periods of time. Factor in mobile devices that manipulate existing data and create new data and the increasing use of video in corporations and the result is millions, billions and even trillions of file-based data elements that create thousands of terabytes of data. (read more)

One can hardly have a conversation about storage management these days without the topic of archiving surfacing. Part of the reason that archiving is commanding more attention is because as companies create and keep ever greater amounts of referential data on their production storage systems, it is creating a host of new problems (read more)