What defines archiving?
Archiving is saving and storing documents during a (very) long, either fixed or indefinite period of time with the intent of being able to easily retrieve these documents.
Especially the latter functionality tends to complicate matters. Unstructured data consisting of 'common files' instead of being organized within either a database (structured data) or in e-mail (semi structured data) oftentimes cause companies trouble.
Benefits of archiving
Archiving is applied in order to reserve the more expensive fast media (Tier 1-media) for data that need to be available fast and frequently. Tier 1 storage includes SAS and Fibre channel disks. When applying archiving, data is copied to less expensive means of storage,such as tape. Also VTL are oftentimes applied. 'Virtual Tape Libraries' physically are highly intelligent optimized disk-based storage appliances. Archiving uses 'smart' ways of saving content, which makes restoring data less complex. To make sure data never gets stored more than once, de-duplication is often applied as well.
How does archiving work?
Several Qi ict vendors present either soft- or hardware to organize archiving automatically so you will hardly have to look at it anymore. Vendors offering archiving tools are:
These systems e.g. automatically periodically copy data to an archiving system using either tape or virtual tape. Depending on its unique features, a system may also de-duplicate or index on-the-fly, which simplifies retrieving archived information. This de-duplication, also referred to as the 'de-dup method', also saves storage capacity within the archiving environment.
Qi ict offers specific Storage Assessment services to explore whether existing data within your current storage facility is fit for archiving.