Data Archiving Solutions in Cloud Computing

Chetan Lohkare
8 min readNov 24, 2022

Due to recent changes in the corporate environment, businesses are on the verge of a data explosion. As a result, managing and maintaining a variety of systems that deliver enormous amounts of data every day is difficult for organizations. Managing unstructured data is a challenge for 95% of businesses. Another problem when working in high-volume data environments is the time it takes to backup and restores data. Databases frequently change when new features are introduced and versions are upgraded. Because of this, companies are using data archiving techniques.

Data archiving helps organisations safeguard resources, preserve historical data, and adhere to regulatory requirements. Data archiving solutions are offered by data-focused companies like iLink Digital to help businesses design efficient data backup and security strategies. Their approach reduces costs, streamlines compliance, and significantly cuts down on processing time.

What is Data Archiving?

The process of archiving data is locating data that is no longer in use in your system and moving it from your production system to long-term storage. This information is valuable even though it isn’t commonly required and can always be given to the service. Improve performance, hasten response times, and abide by all laws and regulations while maximizing the use of active system resources. It essentially modifies your system to make it more productive. Use automatic software to move cold data in accordance with the administrator-established policies.

However, this strategy ensures file integrity after archiving. Users now have direct access to a data archive storage system or data archive plan for faster retrieval and less expensive data storage. It also shows customers how to move data for the optimum performance while adhering to all pertinent regulations and legislation. Data storage that is safe and convenient for your organization. Information can be accessed and data integrity is protected with an archival data management system.

Why Data Archiving?

Companies and organizations who need to quickly retrieve both old and new data while keeping both sets of information must prioritize data archiving. The general direction of changes in governmental regulations, laws, and corporate practices is toward more data that is retained for longer and retrieved more swiftly. Businesses can save money by utilizing data archiving services to stay current with these innovations.

Organizations create data archiving rules that specify the data that will be moved. These data archiving standards enable users to automate the process of finding and archiving data. Security sensitivity, retention periods, and other issues are frequently covered by policies.

Difference between Data Backup and Archiving

Backup and archive differ from one another in how data is scanned, categorized, and stored for later use. A backup is a copy of the most recent operational data and the operations of an organization. This refers to data that is often accessed, modified, or used. The original files remain in their original location and are untouched when the system backs up the data. These backup files allow you to restore your data to a prior state in the event of data loss or corruption. Data is retained in backup systems for a lot less period than it is in archive files. The backup data’s operational significance dictates how frequently the system updates it. This could occur numerous times each day. The file system, server/VM, or item that can be searched for in the backup data at a given time are the only ones that are allowed to be used. Additionally, the backup procedure does not search for files based on their contents. Instead, look up the database, server, or file’s name.

Archive storage, on the other hand, is used for information that is not business-critical but needs to be retained for a long period. For example, data needed to comply with regulations is usually stored for the required amount of time. Since the archive files are no longer active, current, edited, or active, they do not need to be routinely located. Their lack of standard storage has no detrimental effects on normal operations and could even save time and money.

In contrast to backup files, archival data storage solutions allow users to access a large number of files, servers/VMs, and objects for a long length of time. Data is commonly retrieved from archival data storage systems based on its content rather than its name or location. Searchability is more important as inactive content is relocated to archives, especially for compliance concerns. In terms of the criteria for data integrity, a distinction between backup and archive is also made. Archiving solutions for enterprise data are more important than backup systems since storing large amounts of data over an extended period of time increases the risk of corruption and other problems. Systems should be put in place to prevent bit rot, which is the term for the purposeful or malicious deletion or corruption of data.

Advantages of Data Archiving

Archiving data has several advantages. Here are some of the most important.

Allows for more efficient operation of manufacturing systems and lower resource and storage costs.

By eliminating the need to backup inactive data, data archiving technology streamline backup and recovery processes.

Regardless of the industry, data archiving best practices and standards may guarantee that businesses follow all relevant rules and regulations.

The usage of virtual data archiving solutions minimizes the time spent maintaining and monitoring the hardware and software for on-site backup storage, negating the need for office intranets and other pricy infrastructure.

Scalable and cost-effective cloud data archiving solutions enable lean usage base growth, even in industries that generate large amounts of data.

Challenges of Data Archiving and Solutions

The issues of data management and decryption exist. In order to enhance their data management, organizations must choose data archiving solutions that address the issues listed below.

1. Growing volume of data
As operational data generation within organizations rises, it gets harder to keep track of all data sources, manage their storage, and then use them. Without wasting time on administrative tasks, data archiving enables you to grow information and analyze vast amounts of data.

2. Legal Compliance
The requirements for complying with regulations are always changing and getting stricter. Thanks to choices for data archiving, organizations can easily abide by a number of rules. Administrators may now finish legal investigations and compliance reports fast. Keep up with the times and employ data analysis to identify evolving needs.

3. Data Security
Archival data must be protected from theft, loss, damage, and intrusion. Data archiving systems relocate data to a secure area for long-term preservation and storage. Keep your important data accessible and secure so that you can access it whenever you need to.

4. Accessibility
Many users within an organization can require retained data. Businesses can employ information archiving solutions to limit access based on roles.
As a result, teams don’t need IT support to simply examine and use the data.

5. Increased Budget
The firm cannot use 69% of the data that is maintained. This number indicates that businesses are unquestionably overpaying for data storage. especially for businesses that deal with text-based, disorganized, and unstructured data. Data archiving reduces storage expenses by keeping only the data you actually need and eliminating the rest. There will be fewer main data backups as a result, which will also result in lower costs for hardware, software, electricity, and data centers.

Solutions provided by some Technologies

Dell EMC Data Archiving Solutions

As a global leader in data security technology, Dell offers the best archiving solutions. Thanks to its industry-leading corporate backup software, IT teams can easily collect, index, store, manage, retrieve, and delete both structured and unstructured data.

Unstructured information that must be retained for a specific period of time. By quickly obtaining information from email systems, file systems, and Microsoft SharePoint, you can ensure compliance with regulations while reducing IT, labor, and operating costs.

Dell EMC SourceOne is a user-friendly production solution for data archiving. It is incredibly easy and cost-effective to archive emails, files, and SharePoint data with this software solution. You may reduce costs, improve operational and server performance, and respond more quickly to eDiscovery, litigation, and regulatory compliance with the help of Dell EMC’s data archiving technology.

This comprehensive data archiving solution’s various components enable better data management, cost savings, increased operational efficiency, and risk reduction through regularly used data systems.

Components include:

● Dell EMC SourceOne Email Management for Microsoft Exchange

● Dell EMC SourceOne Email Management for IBM Lotus Notes Domino

● Dell EMC SourceOne for File Systems

● Dell EMC SourceOne for Microsoft SharePoint Additional components are:

Users can access news and information more rapidly during the eDiscovery process by using their desktop software or web browser with the aid of an optional tool called Dell EMC SourceOne Discovery Manager.

Benefits of Dell EMC Technology

Data archiving software from Dell Technologies provides significant advantages, enabling organizations to:

Storage expenses can be decreased by shifting large amounts of idle data to less expensive storage and arranging storage tiers to maximize performance. Self-help technology allows users to respond to questions quickly and easily without the need for IT support, which reduces the cost of eDiscovery.

Reducing risk, improving server speed, and reducing the size of user mailboxes could all be accomplished by removing redundant and unnecessary PST files, which are frequently the primary causes of organizational compliance failures and user mailbox size increases. Data archiving processes should be managed, examined, and reported on in one location. More effectively implement business data archiving and preservation procedures. You can reduce the number of backup windows required for data archiving, which will save time and improve application performance. You may improve the efficiency of your email system, SharePoint, and other data sources by routinely moving unnecessary content to the archive storage.

Data Archiving in AWS

For businesses today, the exponential increase in data poses significant issues. Data is becoming more crucial than ever because of analytics and machine learning. Long-term storage is required to meet regulatory requirements. Existing on-premises tape and disc library systems are being modified by customers into solutions that provide better data available for business intelligence and advanced analytics, quicker data retrieval times, higher security and compliance, and improved data durability. We would like to replace it.

For compliance, archival, and long-term retention, AWS provides archive storage choices. Amazon S3 provides nearly infinite scalability, data durability of 99.999999999 percent, and the highest level of data security at a lower cost and faster access times than tape storage. The highest performance, most retrieval options, and most cost-effective archive storage in the cloud are offered by the Amazon S3 Glacier storage class, which was built specifically for data archiving.

There are now three classes of recording storage that are each appropriate for a specific set of permissions and retention periods. Whether you need to access your backed-up data frequently, sporadically, or every three months, the S3 Glacier storage class offers affordable archival storage.

Contributors

◾ Kushal Kela
◾ Chetan Lohkare
◾ Suhas Kadu
◾ Saket Kolpe

--

--