INTELLIGENT BRANDS // Cloud
Cloud-based archiving: an
effortless way to centralise
data management
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D
ata management and specifically data archiving is critical
to businesses in their quest to gain better control over their
IT environments. There are two distinct ways to do this:
tape archiving or cloud archiving, and the latter is gaining more
prominence says Redstor, an international data management and
security specialist firm.
Redstor says that with the advent of cloud solutions, this technology
is beginning to serve as a dynamic form of data archiving.
Danie Marais, Director of Product Management at Redstor says,
“Cloud-based archiving services provide a data storage environment
optimised for archiving data while remaining secure and compliant
with data protection laws (assuming you pick the right vendor).”
However, like all technology, there are advantages and
disadvantages to any solution that is implemented, or technology
approach adopted.
Redstor points out tape archiving has for many years been
considered to be a cost-effective way to ensure that data is managed
effectively, and the reality was that there was no viable alternative.
Other advantages associated with this format was that it did not
have power and cooling requirements and could be kept in an office
environment, this compared to other storage media gave lower costs.
mitigating the risk of data loss from technology failures, this
reassures organisations if anything were to happen to their main
site,” says Marais.
In addition to this, cloud archiving solutions have intelligence behind
them that enables firms to extract value from their data. Data is
typically indexed at ingestion into cloud archive services, providing
rich search capabilities; this allows firms to easily search for files and
folders when they are required.
According to Redstor, when it comes to implementing archiving
solutions, tape archiving is becoming less favoured. “Cloud archiving
technology eliminates the challenge of having to replace tape media
on a regular basis. This is especially problematic for organisations
with large data sets as it translates to a much greater cost – by
implementing a cloud archiving solution the firm does not have
this worry any more as it becomes the cloud archiving providers
problem,” Marais adds.
Tape archiving solutions may have to be maintained beyond end-
of-life supplier support, which can significantly add to costs and the
overall total cost of ownership (TCO) of an archive solution.
However, with cloud archiving solutions this problem does not exist
as support tends to always be included in the cost associated with
the contract. n
As more data was written to a tape archive and more media used,
the relative cost per GB decreased; tape archiving could also be
written off as an investment over a period as the cost of tape drives,
libraries and archive software was spread over a larger volume of
data and usually for a period of long-retention.
Furthermore, tape archives were relatively easy to scale as data
volumes increased. Tape (especially LTO) has continued to scale
to meet those demands, LTO-7 cartridges can hold near 15TB per
cartridge, assuming a 2.5:1 compression rate.
Rapid cloud cover
Cloud solutions can provide an effortless way to centralise data
management and do not require additional hardware.
“Geographical redundancy is one of the reasons organisations
are beginning to favour cloud archiving solutions. Cloud archive
services are able to hold multiple copies of data in diverse locations,
www.intelligentcio.com
Danie Marais, Director of Product Management, Redstor
INTELLIGENTCIO
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