Data archiving is intended to protect older information that is not needed for everyday operations but may have to be accessed occasionally. Data archives serve as a way of reducing primary storage and the related costs, rather than acting as a data recovery tool.
The benefit of data archiving is that it reduces the cost of primary storage. Alternatively, archive storage costs less because it is typically based on a low-performance, high-capacity storage medium.
Archived data is stored on a lower-cost tier of storage, serving as a way to reduce primary storage consumption and related costs. An important aspect of a business’s data archiving strategy is to inventory its data and identify what data is a candidate for archiving.
Data archiving take a number of different forms. Options can be online data storage, which places archive data onto disk systems where it is readily accessible. Archives are frequently file-based, but object storage is also growing in popularity. A key challenge when using object storage to archive file-based data is the impact it can have on users and applications. To avoid changing paradigms from file to object and breaking user and application access, use data management solutions that provide a file interface to data that is archived as objects.
Another archival system uses offline data storage where archive data is written to tape or other removable media using data archiving software rather than being kept online. Data archiving on tape consumes less power than disk systems, translating to lower costs.
A third option is using cloud storage, such as those offered by Amazon or Microsoft – this is inexpensive but requires ongoing investment.