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Disk Archiving & Objects: Page 2 of 2

These fingerprints are called "objects," and some of today's CAS systems have a relatively low limit on how many objects can be stored on the system. They were designed for a single purpose -- email archiving or storing medical records, for example. As customers take full advantage of the easier-to-access nature of disk archiving and begin to store everything old on them, the amount of data stored on these archives will increase substantially, and so will their corresponding objects. Modern archive systems need to have the ability to support a nearly limitless number of objects.

This is important, because if you reach the limit on the number of objects that the archive can support, you need to implement a second archive. This is particularly painful in disk archiving, because if the second archive cannot share object level information with the first archive, there is the likely chance that redundant data can be stored or that retention policies on archive one will not match retention policies on archive two. As a result, this object limitation also increases the time required to manage the system. And it certainly does not meet the requirement of establishing a place to store all of your data until you need to remember it.

So whats the number? When does object count become a problem and begin to effect performance, and how are vendors getting around this? My next entry will get into details about this dirty little secret.

— George Crump is founder of Storage Switzerland , which provides strategic consulting and analysis to storage users, suppliers, and integrators. Prior to Storage Switzerland, he was CTO at one of the nation's largest integrators.