The act of moving data to inexpensive storage locations is known as data archiving. It plays a crucial role in a data management strategy. The objective is to save money on warm storage while keeping old data that may be needed for analysis or future reference as well as information for regulatory compliance. Cold storage tiers, which can hold large amounts of data at a low cost, are frequently used to build data archives. Each type of archival architecture and feature serves a different purpose. The minimum requirements, however, are indexing and searching tools because they guarantee that files will always be accessible.
Why is data archiving crucial?
A data archiving strategy is a crucial component of your data lifecycle management policy because it gives you a way to preserve data while adhering to a reasonable storage budget. Implementing supporting tooling and automation for data archiving typically increases process efficiency. A data archiving solution's main features are as follows:
- Data discovery—a data archiving solution can help admins and end-users easily find files, including spreadsheets, documents, and presentations.
- Data management—a data archiving solution can help you locate redundant data and remove it, or remove ageing files from your file servers.
- Data visibility—a data archiving solution analyses, classifies, and indexes data before storing it on your servers. This process ensures you can easily perform searches and gain insights.
- Data compliance—a data archiving solution automatically prepares responses to requests, including compliance audits, business queries, and litigation.
Factors to Consider When Archiving Data
It's crucial that you pick the appropriate software for your needs before you start using an archiving solution. During a discovery workshop, the consultants at All Pro Solutions can evaluate your business needs and make a recommendation for a suitable provider. You should be aware of the following:
1) Compliance
Although data archives are a useful tool for meeting regulatory compliance needs, compliance should not be taken for granted just because a data archive exists. Your business must uphold a certain set of standards to stay in compliance. It is advised to have a data archiving policy for this very reason.
2) Data Backup vs. Data Archiving
Archived data is not the same as a backup of data, despite being treated as a secondary data warehouse. They actually have different values for businesses. Your data backup is a copy of your data that is only used to reduce risk and get ready for a disaster. The most valuable data for a company is backup data, which should be protected separately from the archive.
A data archiving solution is used to keep information on hand but is rarely used for long periods of time. Consequently, it is not regarded as being essential to the disaster recovery process.
3) Lifecycle Management for Data
The creation of data archiving as a component of an entire lifecycle is the final step. The demands of data administration cannot be assumed to be satisfied by data archiving alone. Additionally, when there is proof of sound administrative practices used throughout the data journey, the advantages of improving database performance produce much stronger results. all the way from creation to deletion.
4) Unobtrusive Archiving
Effective archives only keep the bare minimum of information in order to conserve resources, minimise liability, and minimise the time or effort needed to locate information. You must decide what data you require and how long you must keep it in order to avoid archiving all of your data, which is counterproductive.
You should think about the format of the data and whether or not to archive installation files for viewing applications when choosing which data to keep. Proprietary file types run the risk of not being supported when you retrieve your data in the future, but archiving the programmes that go with them will guarantee readability in the future.
5) Retrieval Conditions
Think about the effects that retrieval times and procedures will have on your company. Some archives (such as those that are offsite or require thorough searches to find the pertinent data) can take days to retrieve data from, and some archives may only be able to return collections of data rather than individual parts of databases or files.
It's important to take into account how transparent the solution is. Productivity will be impacted if data users must request access through IT personnel or from outside providers. Transparent solutions that make it appear as though the data is still stored in its original location can lessen the impact on staff if the data you are archiving is not actually cold but is instead just infrequently accessed.
Five steps to developing a data archiving plan
1. Making an inventory and selecting the data that needs to be archived
Think about the type of data you want to keep in a searchable archive database as you inventory your data and choose which data gets archived. Would you like your emails to be searchable, for instance? Then include that as searchable archive material in your inventory.
Remember that there is no one rule that applies to all situations when choosing which data to archive before you begin listing the data to be archived. Plan an archive strategy for each department with your legal team.
2. Assign a retention schedule for each category in accordance with compliance regulations
If you work in the healthcare, legal, or government sectors, you are aware of the stringent regulations the government has regarding the safekeeping of particular data. For instance, HIPAA's federally mandated regulations mandate that all medical practices and facilities retain patient sensitive data for a predetermined period of time in accordance with the laws of each state or other relevant jurisdiction.
Patients or clients who have stopped receiving care, moved away, or passed away should be able to be archived. Individual patient records are legally required to be preserved, but if they are no longer in use, necessary backups may not be required.
3. Create a comprehensive archive policy
We advise you to establish an archive policy for people connected to your company. A formalised and comprehensive set of guidelines and rules are included in the policy. The objective is to produce a document that is both manageable and enforceable.
Included in this document should be:
• Duration of data storage
• Benchmark for archiving data
• Variety of media used to store data
• Mechanisms that make the data filing process easier
• Rules for who should have access to the archived files
• Under what conditions are they granted access?
4. Proactive integrity protection for the data archive
Your archived data must continue to be protected with strict security measures. This is especially true when deciding which business will handle sensitive information about your clients, business, and employees.
In case you were unaware, data archiving does not provide the level of information security required by regulations. Your secure data backup service will be useful in this situation. Strong encryption should be used to protect private documents.
5. Choosing a product for data archiving
Make a list of all the features you want in a data archiving product or service before making a decision. Finding the best data storage should be your top priority. Our suggestions for what to look for are listed below:
• Software for search and discovery must have a flexible and organised search engine to retrieve stored data.
• Software that supports multiple platforms must function flawlessly with well-known programmes and platforms.
• Software for data deduplication will keep track of duplicated data. Removes it and inserts a link to the initial data in its place.
• Backup software that is automated will ensure that data is archived in accordance with policy and that nothing is left out.
About us: All Pro Solutions
Since 1996, All Pro Solutions, Inc., a US-based manufacturer of automated disc publishing, duplication, printing, data archiving, and offline storage solutions, has earned a stellar reputation for producing high-quality, dependable goods and providing exceptional customer service. Businesses and organisations in the fields of education, healthcare, banking and finance, retail, manufacturing, business services, digital media, and law enforcement all use Pro Solutions' systems. Enterprise content management, marketing and sales support, business services, software distribution, video surveillance, computer crimes and evidence, archiving, data distribution, broadcast and video distribution, medical imaging and records, technical documentation, photo and image distribution and archiving, and business services are all areas where Pro Solutions' systems are used.
All Pro Solutions provides a genuinely unique solution for data archiving and offline storage, which assists government organisations in resolving crucial issues with data storage and security. Our disc archiving system can be configured to produce data files on discs completely automatically, right from the department's servers. The discs can then be kept in the safe Disc Storage vault at All Pro Solutions for long-term, offline, highly secured storage after the files have been archived to them. Given that "cloud" storage has proven to be incredibly risky and expensive for the long-term preservation of sensitive information, this is the safest and most secure method of long-term data storage.
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