The value of corporate data is increasing in reverse relationship with the cost of IT infrastructure. And, the massive volume of mission-critical data generated by today’s businesses creates multiple challenges. Companies must maintain day-to-day access to data, comply with regulations and litigation requirements, ensure business continuity, and provide for long-term storage. Data lifecycle management (DLM) provides for this.

DLM requires creating retention policies, which specify how business data is backed up, archived and accessed. These policies are developed by the General Counsel’s office (GC) or others, and are largely implemented by the IT department. Often this is problematic for IT, because it must wrestle with the total amount of storage required, the effect of backups on network traffic, offsite storage for disaster recovery, and archiving. This is compounded by the fact that data is stored in different formats, on a variety of media, and in disparate locations.

To ensure that data is always accessible as needed, the departments responsible for ensuring this should together define policies that account for business needs and technological considerations:

• ‑Data Backup provides for day-to-day accessibility. If a critical file is lost or a server fails, restoring data must be in a timely manner. There are two main backup technologies: tape and disk-to-disk. Tape backup is giving way to disk-based backup because the latter provides faster response times, higher reliability and less risk (generally automating the process and removing the human element). A company should set “return to operations” targets that define how long it takes to restore data, and set a regular backup schedule. In some cases, daily backups may be adequate. In others, continuous protection may be required. Offsite backup is also a consideration—many companies utilize it to assure disaster recovery and contribute to a robust overall business continuity plan.

• ‑Archiving is the longer-term storage of data, generally for a period of years. The duration is determined by a combination of laws and company policy. Archived data needn’t be accessible for immediate use but must remain available for compliance, litigation and other requirements. Considerations include:

> ‑Storing the data in a secure location, typically offsite to safeguard against natural disasters.

> ‑Storing the data on a reliable media. Tape was the traditional archive media but it deteriorates over time and, when data needs to be restored, often up to 50% of it cannot be recovered because the tape breaks, the media has deteriorated in a way that it can’t be read or there is no device available to read the particular tape format. As a result, archiving on disk drives or optical media such as a read/write DVD may be a better approach.

• ‑Data migration organizes and transfers data from multiple formats and outmoded media to a common, indexed format on disk. This improves accessibility, compliance and E-Discovery preparation. Organizing and consolidating data this way can result in considerable cost savings and improved risk management, since data stored in various formats and media is difficult to manage and restore.

Summary

The rapidly increasing volume of data generated by businesses can create significant data management challenges. Businesses should involve IT, General Counsel and others to develop data lifecycle policies including the backup, archiving and migration of digital assets, thus improving business operations, reducing risk and cost, and improving compliance.

Kevin Payne is Director of Marketing at Seagate Services, 408-625-5789; email: kevin.payne@seagate.com;
web: www.seagateservices.com.