If you are used to handling large volumes of data, then you will need to get familiar with data archiving. In this blog post, we will dive into the different types of data archiving, its benefits, and the challenges you might encounter along the way.
How does data archiving work?
Data archiving moves infrequently accessed data from primary storage to long-term, cost-effective storage solutions. This process consists of identifying and transferring data to secure locations like cloud storage or tape.
The archived data is compressed and encrypted for security, ensuring it’s preserved for future use. While retrieval times may be slower, archived data remains accessible when needed, reducing storage costs and improving system performance.
Let/s start by defining the possible types of storage.
There are two types of data archiving
Depending on the type of data, the durability you are looking for and the size of the data you are looking to store, there are two common types of data archiving.
Online storage:
- Cloud services typically offer redundancy through multiple copies of data stored across geographically distributed data centers, enhancing durability and availability.
- High durability guarantees that data is protected against hardware failure, with most cloud providers offering 99.99% availability.
Offline storage:
- Redundancy must be managed manually (e.g., creating multiple copies of data on different tapes or hard drives).
- Durability depends on the quality of the storage medium (e.g., magnetic tapes can degrade over time if not stored correctly).
- Physical media is vulnerable to environmental damage (e.g., moisture, heat, or magnetic field exposure).
6 Benefits of Data Archiving:
Data archiving offers a wide range of benefits, especially in terms of long-term data management, storage efficiency, and compliance. Below are some key advantages:
1. Cost Savings
Reduced Storage Costs: Archiving older, inactive data to less expensive storage solutions (like cloud storage or tape drives) frees up space on primary storage systems that are used for active data, reducing the need for costly high-performance storage.
2. Improved Performance
Optimized Active Systems: Archiving helps to keep primary data storage systems lean, improving their performance by ensuring that only actively used data remains on fast, high-performance storage.
3. Compliance and Legal Requirements
Regulatory Compliance: Many industries are subject to strict data retention policies (e.g., healthcare, finance). Archiving ensures that organizations meet these requirements by retaining data in a secure, easily accessible format. It also provides an organized, time-stamped record of historical data, which can be vital for audits, investigations, or legal disputes.
4. Data Protection and Security
Long-Term Data Preservation: Archiving ensures that important historical data is not lost due to hardware failures or disasters. Many archival solutions include built-in redundancy and error correction mechanisms to preserve data integrity.
5. Scalability and Environmental Impact
Handling Data Growth: As organizations generate more data over time, archiving provides a scalable solution to manage that growth without overwhelming primary storage systems. Also, archiving can help reduce the environmental impact by consolidating storage and lowering energy consumption compared to maintaining large-scale active systems.
6. Support for Big Data and Analytics
Data Mining: Archived data can serve as a valuable resource for big data analysis or machine learning applications, allowing organizations to extract insights from long-term data trends. Archived data is often used for retrospective analysis and reporting, helping businesses track long-term performance or trends.
Challenges of Data Archiving
While data archiving is important for long-term storage of infrequently accessed data, a backup space solution (especially for disaster recovery and short-term storage) might be a more suitable option in certain situations, particularly when addressing some of the challenges listed above. Here's why:
- Slow Retrieval Times
Archived data is optimized for cost-effective storage rather than speed. While this is beneficial for long-term retention, it can lead to slower retrieval times, particularly when the data is stored in offline media (e.g., tape) or in lower-access cloud tiers.
In emergency situations, when immediate access is required, this delay can be problematic, especially for critical data or business continuity needs.
- Data Integrity Risks
Over time, archived data is at risk of degradation or corruption, particularly when stored on physical media like magnetic tapes or older hard drives. The risk of data integrity issues increases as hardware ages or is subjected to environmental factors (e.g., temperature, humidity). Even with cloud-based archiving, there’s always a risk of corruption, especially if data is improperly handled during the migration process or due to software failures. Ensuring ongoing data integrity requires robust monitoring and management practices.
- Ongoing Storage Costs
While archiving is typically cheaper than maintaining active data in high-performance storage, it’s not without its own costs. Managing large volumes of archived data, especially when migrations to newer storage technologies are necessary, can lead to significant ongoing expenses. The cost of storing vast amounts of archived data may include both physical and cloud-based storage costs, as well as administrative overhead for managing and retrieving the data as needed.
- Compliance and Retention Complexity
For organizations in regulated industries, managing compliance and retention requirements can be a complex task. Data archiving must adhere to strict retention schedules, often dictated by legal or regulatory standards (e.g., GDPR, HIPAA). Failing to comply can lead to penalties or legal issues. Additionally, ensuring that data is properly deleted at the end of its retention period is a delicate process. Without careful oversight, organizations risk either keeping data longer than required or prematurely deleting data that may still need to be retained.
- Obsolescence of Storage Technologies
As technology evolves, archived data may become inaccessible due to outdated storage formats or incompatible hardware. For example, data stored on magnetic tapes or older optical disks may be difficult or impossible to retrieve if the necessary hardware fails or becomes obsolete. Even cloud-based storage can face challenges in terms of data migration across platforms or formats. This issue requires organizations to periodically update their archiving solutions or migrate data to newer, more accessible formats, which can incur additional costs and administrative effort.
- Security Concerns
Ensuring the security of archived data is crucial, especially when it contains sensitive or confidential information. Archived data, if not properly encrypted or secured, may become vulnerable to unauthorized access, either due to internal threats or external breaches. Moreover, physical media, such as tapes or hard drives, are prone to theft or loss if not securely managed. Cloud-based archiving can offer strong encryption and access controls, but physical security remains a concern for offsite or hybrid archiving solutions.
- Migration and Lifecycle Management
Archived data often needs to be migrated to new storage platforms as technologies change, storage costs evolve, or data volumes grow. Managing these migrations while ensuring that the data remains accessible and intact can be complex and resource-intensive. Additionally, tracking the lifecycle of archived data—knowing when to migrate, delete, or update it—requires a comprehensive data management strategy. Failure to properly manage the lifecycle can result in data loss, legal complications, or unnecessary storage costs.
5 Popular Data Archiving Tools:
Amazon S3 Glacier
A low-cost cloud storage solution for archiving infrequently accessed data, with retrieval times ranging from minutes to hours.
Veritas Enterprise Vault
An enterprise-level archiving solution for emails, files, and SharePoint data, offering compliance features, search, and eDiscovery.
Commvault
A comprehensive data management platform that combines backup and archiving, offering automated data retention, compliance, and cost-effective storage.
MailStore
A cloud and on-premises email archiving solution that enables secure, searchable email storage while ensuring compliance with retention policies.
Microsoft Azure Blob Storage
A scalable, low-cost archival solution that integrates with other Azure services, ideal for storing large datasets that require long-term retention.
Archive vs Backup:
While data archiving and backup solutions may seem alike, they serve different purposes.
- Backup is a proactive process designed to protect actively used data by creating copies that can be quickly restored in the event of data loss, corruption, or system failure. They are regularly updated, often on a daily or hourly basis, to ensure that the most recent data is captured and can be restored swiftly, often within minutes, with minimal disruption to business operations.
- Archiving, on the other hand, is about moving inactive data—typically older or less frequently accessed files—into long-term storage. This data may no longer be required for day-to-day operations but must be kept for regulatory compliance, legal obligations, or historical reference. Unlike backups, archives are rarely updated or retrieved, and retrieval can be slower.
Why Backup Space Might Be Better
Data archiving and back up solutions are both viable options, but the final decision will depend on your needs. However, if you are storing valuable and active data, backup space might be what you are looking for to rest assured. Backup space provide:
- Faster Access: Backup systems are optimized for quick recovery, making them more suitable for disaster recovery or restoring critical data.
- Easier Management: Backup systems are typically automated and require less manual intervention than archiving solutions.
- Cost-Effective for Short-Term Needs: Backup space is usually cheaper for smaller datasets or short-term storage compared to archiving.
- Real-Time Protection: Backup space provides continuous or frequent data protection, which is crucial for disaster recovery and maintaining business continuity.
- Security and Recovery: Backup solutions often have stronger security and faster restoration capabilities, making them better for protecting sensitive data and ensuring rapid recovery after incidents like cyberattacks.
In conclusion, a good backup space solution is ideal for quick data protection and disaster recovery, while data archiving is better suited for long-term storage of infrequently accessed data with compliance needs.
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