Taking the Fast Track to Enterprise Search and ediscovery

Transcription

1 A CommVault Business-Value White Paper Taking the Fast Track to Enterprise Search and ediscovery A white paper that challenges the traditionally held view that organizations must archive information to facilitate enterprise search and ediscovery workflow Simon Taylor, Senior Director Information & Access Management CommVault Systems, Inc.

2 Contents Where Did Archiving Come From? 3 Separating Search From Archive 3 How Do You Gain Access to Information Without Archive? 4 Connecting the Dots 5 Don t Discount Archiving Though, It Still Has a Purpose 5 Using Simpana Software To Deliver Effective Enterprise Search 6 More on ediscovery 7 Taking the Fast-Track to Enterprise Search 7 Conclusion 8 About CommVault 8

3 Where Did Archiving Come From? During the past 10 years, we ve seen organizations gradually deploy solutions to move data from primary applications, file systems and document repositories to secondary tiers to free up much needed storage space, reduce ongoing storage costs and improve application/infrastructure efficiency. When this process involved simple data move decisions it went by the name of hierarchical storage management (HSM). This paradigm quickly evolved to include requirements for retention and seamless end-user access to retained information. Archiving was born! You can look back over the last 7-8 years in particular and see how archiving has risen meteorically through requirements covering compliance, records retention and cost reduction strategies to become one of the hottest IT requirements today. The trouble is as more data is archived, the burden of risk shifts from retaining information to accessing information; after all why keep information if you can t access it? In response, archiving technologies adopted content search to turn the ever growing repositories of retained information into corporate accessible information assets. At this time, the use cases for search largely came from the end-user wanting to access their data that was being archived. Again, it wasn t long before this requirement was enveloped by corporate searches across the enterprise and later workflows associated with supervising records for compliance as well as facilitating discovery for litigation. There is a problem though archives are fundamentally only as good as the data that is placed inside them. In other words, if they don t contain everything your organization needs or, indeed, the specific records that need to be retained, then the risk isn t being managed. What use is a search capability that doesn t search everything that you need? Further, how useful is it when the same search capability requires you to archive or copy more duplicated data in order to get the search function to search everything? Isn t that a Catch 22? There has to be a better way. Separating Search From Archive So what s the answer? A simple approach is to think of the problem areas and, in turn, use cases that drive the need for enterprise search. You can then look at the most appropriate ways of facilitating the access to information that s needed without preconceptions of tiering or copying data into an archive. The following items represent common problems experienced and questions raised in searching for enterprise information: n Can I find everything that s needed? n Why does the search process seem to take too long? n Are my search results complete and legally defensible? n How can I collect and preserve what you find in a search for legal hold? 3

4 n How do you search across multiple sites and geographies at the same time? n How can I search for information in hard to reach places, e.g. backup tapes and desktops? n How can I mine into preliminary search results to explore further? n When can I do search to manage overwhelming numbers of search results? Most search challenges stem from a need to find information to make a particular business decision. Understanding the broader driver often provides the best context for your search effort. Good examples of drivers are Freedom of Information Access requests (FoIA), ediscovery/edisclosure activities, HR investigations or contract disputes. The objective of any search exercise is initially to identify relevant information through intelligent data mining techniques and custodian-based criteria. For ediscovery efforts, additional workflow is involved to place the identified data on legal hold, efficiently cull down the result set as the legal matter progresses and produce to outside or opposing counsel. The end goal is a succinct collection of non-privileged, responsive items that can be used to help make competitive business decisions. Did anyone see the word archive mentioned in the description? Of course the answer is no, so the question is then why would you archive a copy of everything only to find that a small segment of data needs to be indentified or preserved? Are you confused? Well, you don t need to be any longer. The time has come to separate the search and workflow aspects of information access from the lifecycle and archive requirements of information retention. How Do You Gain Access to Information Without Archive? Imagine you re an IT manager faced with the challenge of giving specific business users access to search all of your structured and unstructured sources of information without impacting production systems. Perhaps this is the sort of request that normally results in hordes of IT staff running for the door. Sound impossible? Perhaps not what s the one source of data that already represents a view of production system information that you could access if you only had a search capability? The answer is of course backup data. Backup data represents a complete copy updated, sometimes hourly, of all production data. Backup data also covers lots of enterprise sources of structured and unstructured data including servers, applications, and file systems, desktops and laptops. So the original statement is not so impossible after all. You in fact already have a copy of the data you need to access. You just need to enable such access. 4

5 Connecting the Dots After enlightenment you have to connect the dots. To get to an enabled state of enterprise search across backup, what we now need to do is think about the primary and secondary use cases that we need to search on. Then we can see if backup data is a fit. Some of the most common use cases for enterprise search and ediscovery are as follows: Primary n Corporate enterprise search across all information repositories both in online (backup) and offline (archive) copies for business driven access n Mine unstructured data to find important records based on meaning n Find duplicates, consolidate and save space and cost n Self service end-user information recovery for lost of deleted content Secondary n Manage legal preservation and workflow for ediscovery n Implement retention schedules to specific searched content n Find, supervise and review content for compliance and record keeping n Collect data for movement: records applications and datacenters So is search over backup a fit? Of course it is. Backups cover file servers, and file systems, document management systems, desktops and laptops. In other words, you already have a copy of the data you need access to. Why copy the copy just to search? You only need to enable the access to all data, anytime without moving or copying a single item. In short, if you search the backup data across all of the sources being targeted, you can have a higher degree of confidence that you ve conducted a complete search versus the search of an archive that contains at best a subset of information. Don t Discount Archiving Though, It Still Has a Purpose The most common requirements for archiving are to save space on primary systems and, of course, for keeping information records for industry specific compliance, e.g. healthcare, finance. Good information governance is specifically about introducing information lifecycle retention and supervision into your environment. If we use archiving solutions for this, then the right information records can be granularly aligned to retention policies as they age from primary systems into an information lifecycle archive. Technology enables 5

6 classification capabilities and associate records to retention policies aligned to business record needs. Whether you separate this information from the way you store other records, for example backup information, is largely dependent on how your business views information risk and, more importantly, how data is accessed across the enterprise. The key, though, is making information access consistent. Using Simpana Software to Deliver Effective Enterprise Search Today s enterprise search strategies need to cover active information stores and long-term information retention paradigms in order to be effective. CommVault Simpana software is the only solution that allows you to manage all data management holistically from one platform technology and one console. Make it visible through one search and workflow interface, all whilst optimizing data storage and processing through embedded deduplication, encryption and audited authentication. 6

7 CommVault Simpana software s enterprise search and ediscovery workflow solution has key areas of capability depending on requirements as highlighted above. Collect g Store g Index g Search g Classify g Mine More on ediscovery By leveraging the built-in workflow and multiple features of CommVault software s ediscovery solution, attorneys can easily achieve this goal with little or no help from their IT staff, essentially eliminating the IT bottleneck that often occurs throughout many ediscovery efforts. Using CommVault Simpana software, Electronically Stored Information (ESI) is gathered and fully content indexed throughout the organization, including unstructured information sources such as s, files and document records, including all backup data, as well as structured database records. All ESI is then preserved through a single click operation within the Simpana ediscovery console. All reviewed and analyzed ESI can then be made available to both in-house and outside counsel for further case management-based legal operations. End-to-end efficient ediscovery is finally solved! Taking the Fast-Track to Enterprise Search Whether you re a current CommVault customer or not, you may be closer than you think to fast and simple enterprise search & ediscovery. With just a few simple steps, you can expand the scope of search to all enterprise data managed by CommVault software, add award-winning ediscovery workflow and one-click legal preservation capabilities to your existing Simpana solution, and all from the same interface. Accessing your information has actually never been easier. 1. Get granular with your backups* Enable brick-level file and message backups. Speed up the whole process using CommVault Simpana Data Classification Enabler (DCE). 2. Switch on search* Leverage industry-leading Microsoft FAST search technology seamlessly from within CommVault Simpana software. 3. ediscovery and enterprise search challenges solved! , file and document data contained in your backups is now fully content indexed and available for efficient search, data mining, preservation and legal workflow. *License key activation required 7

8 At the same time you can reduce data and storage processing costs through deduplication and mitigating risk through industry FIPs certified, audited and authenticated information records retention. Conclusion In conclusion, the time is now to challenge traditional methods for enterprise search and ediscovery. With careful assessment of your business needs and associated information access requirements, you may be able to avoid unnecessary levels of complexity and inefficiency that the status quo creates. About CommVault A singular vision a belief in a better way to address current and future data management needs guides CommVault in the development of Singular Information Management solutions for high-performance data protection, universal availability and simplified management of data on complex storage networks. CommVault s exclusive single-platform architecture gives companies unprecedented control over data growth, costs and risk. CommVault Simpana software was designed to work together seamlessly from the ground up, sharing a single code and common function set, to deliver superlative backup and recovery, archive, replication, search and resource management capabilities. More companies every day join those who have discovered the unparalleled efficiency, performance, reliability and control only CommVault can offer. Information about CommVault is available at CommVault s corporate headquarters is located in Oceanport, New Jersey, in the United States. n n info@commvault.com CommVault Worldwide Headquarters n 2 Crescent Place n Oceanport, NJ n n Fax: CommVault Regional Offices: United States n Europe n Middle East & Africa n Asia-Pacific n Latin America & Caribbean n Canada n India n Oceania CommVault Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. CommVault, CommVault and logo, the CV logo, CommVault Systems, Solving Forward, SIM, Singular Information Management, Simpana, CommVault Galaxy, Unified Data Management, QiNetix, Quick Recovery, QR, CommNet, GridStor, Vault Tracker, InnerVault, QuickSnap, QSnap, SnapProtect, Recovery Director, CommServe, CommCell, ROMS, CommValue, and Farline are trademarks or registered trademarks of CommVault Systems, Inc. All other third party brands, products, service names, trademarks, or registered service marks are the property of and used to identify the products or services of their respective owners. All specifications are subject to change without notice. 8