Archive Tiering

The explosion in the number of files, increasing the number of cyber threats, but also technological innovation with the generalization of air gaps or archive tiering. All of these factors question our definition of what is quality archiving.

What are the requirements for long-term archiving?

It cannot be emphasized enough: file archiving is about maintaining the last copy of the data over time. Is it for 5, 10 or more than 30 years, the goal is far beyond simple backup! Only multi-copy archiving can avoid dramatic disasters, such as those who hit MySpace. Former leader in blogging announced in 2015 that he had lost millions of audio, photos and videos uploaded by users.

Archiving files have several objectives:

* Protecting company information assets, including – but not limited to – cyber attacks;

* Appreciate production, by proposing an easy archiving process to approach documents must still be accessed by users; That is, easy to find, open, use … This condition implies accompanying the evolution of documents from time to time, and attempts to fight the coop of technology.

* Bring company archives to compliance with data protection regulations.

New technology solutions help organizations of all sizes to comply with these new requirements – as long as they do it in time, before the IT disaster occurs.

Select Files to Archive

Exponential increases in the number and volume of documents produced by organizations forcing the imperative sorting.

This is not determined by technology, which has sufficient archiving capacity. But it is a compliance question for data storage regulations and accessibility of effective documents in the long term. Employees in 2050 cannot be expected to deal with 30-year-old files themselves.

Therefore an efficient file archiving starts with identification of important documents (knowledge, intellectual property, binding documents, etc.). This is a problem determining which documents are needed for operations, or even organizational strategies. They must then be categorized based on functions and priorities, and their life cycle must be managed. Finally, they must be inhabited by well-chosen metadata at the time of archiving to facilitate their retrieval later on.

Design An Efficient File Archiving Process

Some organizations adopt data archiving plans to fulfill legal obligations. They forget the main purpose of this plan: to ensure that data can be accessed effectively by employees.

Effective file archiving is the first and foremost process. Let’s take the example of Labo Paris, a post-production company for the film and audio-visual industry that manages very large data volumes. Labo Paris opens for ATempo-Digital Archive (existing) archiving solutions for its technical capabilities and an efficient user interface. It makes data archiving possible with dragging and drop simple!

Archive Tiering Against Cyber Threats

The fast evolution of cyber threats is not only harming production data, but now also backup warehouses and archives. This makes it necessary to find a solution that can be scaled or use certain technologies that present an effective obstacle regardless of their transformation.

* Water gap filling solution Save copy of files archived in offline storage, disconnected so that it cannot be accessed by a cyber attack. The effectiveness of the air gap because it depends on the integration into a global archiving solution, which takes into account and secures all access points. In this condition, the air gap allows it to protect data even if there is an attack or disaster in the operating site; What makes this has proven decent plebiscite technology among cyber security professionals.

* Other archiving solutions use data levels in archives and over time, practices better known as the Archive-Tiering. The challenge is to adapt file retention practices with the importance of files and frequencies or scarcity of use after archiving. Therefore it is preferred to transfer it to cheaper storage media, but equally safe.

Archive segmentation Thus can reduce storage costs, while considering the user’s real needs.

Support Backup

The archiving data backup solution must meet the double challenges of the technology that changes rapidly and their long-term conservation purposes. Therefore they have to spread plans to support the file life cycle being archived. It involves many tasks, such as indexing information from metadata to provide enhanced search functionality in the long term, or technology implementation and monitoring regulations.

By relying on common sense practices and technology such as air gaps or archive-tiering, file archiving can meet the challenges of preserving files for decades, although rapid growth and evolution of problems at stake, while remaining economically feasible for businesses even as data volume not Structured explodes.