There is a big difference between backing up data and archiving data, and both are very important. Anyone, and really that is most of us, who has failed to maintain proper data backups, either has been, or almost certainly will be, stung by a hardware or even software failure that leaves them feeling somewhat bereft when their precious data either disappears or becomes inaccessible.
Once the initial panic subsides a little (and just about everyone who finds themselves in this situation does panic), the realisation and then the reluctant acceptance dawn that a huge amount of work will need to be done and a large amount of money spent in order to get back to where we once were. It is like locking yourself out of your house; many of us manage to do it once, though very few people do it twice; just ask any locksmith.
Archiving data is an entirely different process, though it is also very important. When you create a data archive you are moving data that is no longer needed in the short term into a storage device where it will be retained for the longer term. Often it is data that must be retained in order to comply with data retention regulations as well as data that is still sufficiently important that you might need to refer to it sometime in the future.
Any data or file archive that is created is only useful if it is properly indexed and searchable, and for regulatory compliance it is essential that it is; there are also maximum time scales within which certain data must be retrievable.
Today the amount of data generated is growing at an exponential rate, sp identifying and archiving the data that is not required in the short term allows you to manage it before it becomes uncontrollable. It also allows you to maintain backups of current data in a controllable manner.
For instance if you keep all of your data in a primary storage tier, then the time that it takes to back it up will also grow at a nearly exponential rate. If today it takes four hours to create a data backup, how much longer will it be before it takes over twenty four hours? Once data is placed in an archive and two independent copies are retained, then there is no longer any need to back it up again.
Data archives also put data in locations that can be accessed corporately by those with appropriate access permissions. Non archived data is often distributed across departments and individual work stations which makes searching it almost impossible. Also it has been shown that non-archived data often has ten or more copies that are stored in various back-ups, a terrible waster of expensive storage resources.
Back-ups are needed on a day to day basis, and archives should be used for long term data storage. For further information on data and file archiving services, visit www.Mimecast.com
