Data archiving is the process of moving older data no longer in active use into siloed storage to maintain it long-term.
Data archiving is the practice of creating a safe storage of data no longer in use, moving it to a storage device and holding onto it for a long period. Archiving stores the data for a long time, allowing for retrieval if needed.
Organizations may use data storage for retaining information in general, as well as retention of information needed to comply. Data saved under the compliance archives category is retained for compliance with regulatory and audit requirements.
Using storage policies, the administrator makes sure data moving into the storage location follows appropriate regulations and requirements.
The administrator sets up the times, locations, and data to store, and the archiving software does the rest. When data moves into an archived state, queries and access are not expected anymore.
Companies use data storage at the end of the specified retention period for a number of reasons, including compliance with laws (since stored data is traceable), protecting data from being lost, and storage cost reduction.
When deletion is not an option, as compliance with regulations requires longer retention periods, data archiving is an answer, since data archiving allows organizations to safely store messages in off-site servers or in the cloud.
For one, data archiving allows for a much cheaper way of storing information, whether it is stored on off-site servers or in the cloud, thanks to tiered options of storage costs. Not only is data archiving a more cost-effective solution for organizations, moving their data around increases efficiency, decreasing the size of data backups.
Your archiving solution should provide simple data access, storage, and restore capabilities when needed. Depending on the amount of data you wish to store, you must also choose a cost-effective solution, since the storage costs add up rapidly when storing terabytes of data.
In general, data volumes are larger, and you may require an analytics-based storage solution in order to effectively access data.
The volume of data being processed is just one factor which will define an optimal data archiving solution for your business.
For longer-term storage, ideally, you will want to store data on storage media that will last for an extended period. Because your archives will be stored for long periods of time, you need to select a storage type that lasts for the length of time your retention policies require.
To prevent situations such as these, you may find it useful to archive not just data, but copies of installation media for applications that generate data.
An archive is only helpful if you can get to the data when you need it, so it is important to check periodically to make sure that the storage media you choose continues to work.
The drawback of restricting your archiving processes to avoid data duplication is that, if the individual datasets are lost for whatever reason, you have no other way of obtaining data.
To do data storage cost-effectively, it is necessary to differentiate data that needs to be a part of backups from data that should instead be stored in archives, and put into a cold store designed for archiving. A data archiving plan is an essential component to your data lifecycle management policy, providing a means of maintaining the information while staying within a reasonable storage budget.
Data storage solutions that store archival data are cost-effective, while also taking pressure off of your IT department, since employees no longer have to pester them with help backing up email inboxes, or searching through old, deleted, or misplaced files and communications records.
Archiving helps organizations minimize data loss, reduce operational costs, increase document security, improve compliance with different laws and regulations, and ensure legal and audit evidence should there be a legal or auditing incident.
