Archiving Grows in Complexity, Consequence

Posted by byteandswitch.com on January 10, 2005

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Ah, archiving. Talk about changing times.

In the good old days, archiving data meant consigning tapes to dust-bunny duty in a far-off warehouse (the real, tin-roofed kind). Now, as we all know, the rules for retaining data have changed. A new word, "compliance" connoting everything that must be done to digitally abide by new government regulations – has entered the storage IT argot.

At the same time, the staggering growth of data has continued to wreak havoc on enterprise applications – and storage budgets – by adding strain to primary storage. To top it all off, auditors and users alike often demand quick, disk-based access to data that has been sent off to secondary storage.

Now here's the kicker: As the problem of archiving has gotten more complex, so have the solutions. Sure, there are plenty of products (and services) that intelligently offload aging data from primary storage – and bring it back at the snap of a corporate lawyer's manicured fingers. But getting the right setup for a particular organization calls for a detailed plan of action.

In this month's Byte and Switch Insider, Archiving: A Plan of Attack, we tackle the intricacies of the various archiving options – and wrestle the problem to earth.