The evolution of data archiving

The evolution of data archiving

1 1 How archiving needs to change for the modern enterprise Today s enterprises are buried by data, and this problem is being exacerbated by the unfettered growth of unstructured data. Business leaders face a number of challenges: Data growth, budget pressures and service-level requirements strain the capabilities of traditional backup and recovery processes. They must rely on the discoverability of their information management solutions to access critical data for legal, regulatory compliance or security purposes. This environment is becoming much more difficult to manage. Archiving is often overlooked in data management strategies, or confused with backup and recovery. So what is the difference between backup and archiving? Backup helps recover information and processes in case they are interrupted, corrupted or lost. Archives, on the other hand, help discover details of information and processes not in current use, in case they become useful again because of some unanticipated legal or regulatory event. Essentially, archiving recognizes and acts on the value of the information it handles. Archiving can unlock huge efficiencies in storage capacity, core network bandwidth, backup and recovery time, and user service levels, particularly when used in combination with a backup solution. Taking a proactive archiving approach can help to reduce business risks, lower costs and increase efficiency. Today, the majority of systems that have been developed for archiving business records struggle with the unstructured nature of data. Offline access, permission synchronization, object-level retention and full-text indexing are often afterthoughts. Symantec Enterprise Vault addresses these issues by moving older, less frequently accessed data from primary storage to cheaper disk or even tape, and gives users undiminished access to archived files and email whether they are online or off. It also archives unstructured information from messaging, file and collaboration systems, optimizing storage, classification and retention processes to help companies stop buying storage and discover data faster.

2 2 The data explosion and archiving in the cloud As data continues to grow, it needs longer backups and more storage. And even as storage prices drop, management of that data grows more complex. Organizations are faced with budget pressures and regulatory requirements, but often IT resources and talent are spread thin. Cloud storage has emerged as a potential solution for many of these challenges around enterprise data storage, and the industry as a whole has improved in areas such as available features, pricing and vendor choice. It is a particularly attractive option for organizations that want to use the cloud for some portion of their storage needs. There are a number of solutions in this emerging market, from basic online data storage to more sophisticated offerings. The key is to match a cloud service to the organization s service-level agreement requirements and type of access required. Cloud storage is moving toward a long-term data archiving platform, including capabilities such as search, data lifecycle management and the ability to store both structured data such as databases and unstructured data such as user files. Cloud archiving has a number of benefits over traditional backup there is no need to acquire hardware or software, and customers only pay for the storage needed at the end of any given month. This approach also reduces the strain on an organization s internal IT resources. In addition, mirrored or replicated data can be accessed online at all times, and with a tiered archive fewer copies of data are generated by legacy backup applications. Search functionality harnesses scalable cloud-based processing resources to deliver rapid results from multiple points of access.

3 3 Symantec Enterprise Vault cloud addresses the challenges of email storage management, legal discovery and regulatory compliance through a cloud-based service with unlimited storage and retention. No hardware or software is required, freeing up IT resources and providing users with rapid, secure access to archived email on the go from smartphones and tablets. It also features intuitive end-user searches within Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Web Access, as well as support for Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft BPOS, IBM Lotus Domino and GroupWise servers. Symantec s cloud offering allows for the rapid search and retrieval of emails and attachments, reducing local email stores, improving server performance and shortening backup times, while providing users with unlimited email archives. With the scalability of cloud, collaborative review, categorization and filtering features help cull large volumes of email, while multiple email servers can be supported from one centralized, searchable email archive. Bringing green to your archiving process Organizations are going green and setting sustainability objectives, from managed print services to server virtualization. But archiving should also be considered an essential tool in reducing the enterprise digital footprint. Archiving helps to reduce the storage footprint and costs by up to 60 per cent or more by moving deduplication and compression closer to the source, while retention and deletion policies keep information for only as long as needed. Backing up duplicate data wastes time, storage capacity and network bandwidth. The process of deduplication helps get the most from server, storage and network infrastructure, and block-level deduplication allows physical and virtual machine backups run 70 to 90 per cent faster cutting the storage footprint up to 95 per cent 1. When deduplication is done at the client instead of the media server, those improvements mean not only a smaller storage footprint, but also shorter backup windows and reduced consumption of network bandwidth during backups. 1. Your backup is not an Archive - http://www.idgconnect.com/view_ abstract/5791/your-backup-archive

4 4 Symantec Enterprise Vault deduplicates and compresses information to store a single lightweight copy of each file or message, regardless of the number of times it was archived or its original location, and streamlines search, discovery and legal hold of archived information without wasting storage or staff time. Without archiving, much of the time, bandwidth and storage spent on backups are simply wasted. Multiple geographic and point-in-time backups of non-current information cut into backup and recovery windows, increase costs and waste vast amounts of storage. Archiving is a step toward a more sustainable approach to storage, saving energy consumption and IT resources. Meeting e-discovery requirements through archiving Discovery requirements grow every year and backups cannot continue to meet them there are simply too many copies of too much data. While multiple point-in-time backups help meet recovery objectives, in the discovery process multiple copies are considered discrepancies. This causes disruption and delay during legal discovery, and can introduce unnecessary risks when multiple incompatible records must be reconciled or explained in court. While this approach wastes a lot of storage, it s commonly used in many organizations today. Legal discovery can disrupt IT operations and pull technical specialists away from their primary responsibilities into unfamiliar, uncomfortable roles. As many high-profile cases have shown, failure to comply with a discovery request for email as part of the litigation process can have a tremendous impact on a business, from heavy fines to negative press to jail time. Many organizations have internal policies to preserve email messages or documents over a certain period of time. In a backup-based archive, this usually means tapes are destroyed on a particular date. But laws and regulations set different retention dates for different types of data.

5 5 Certain content (such as orders and contracts) may need to be maintained for years, while other data (such as personal email and newsletters) can be eliminated more quickly. In the United States, for example, Federal Rules for Civil Procedure govern the use of electronic evidence and set requirements for holds. Effective information management requires the classification of data into relevant categories, along with the ability to enforce different policies for each category. Archiving provides a single official indexed record and supports policy-based retention to meet different regulatory requirements. Archiving solutions are designed to meet such requirements; backup solutions are not. A proactive archiving approach can help to reduce the costs associated with search and collection of electronic data by creating a centralized and indexed archive that can be searched on demand. Symantec Enterprise Vault addresses this with e-discovery and search-based access for legal users to search, preserve, review and export electronically stored information. It also allows for an in-depth search of electronically stored information across the enterprise for visibility into and control of the discovery, assessment and management of unstructured and semistructured information. It also allows for early case assessments, legal hold and review without manual, time-consuming collection processes. Legal and outside counsel can locate relevant documents without IT assistance. And in place legal hold protects documents from tampering without building a duplicate archive.

6 6 Archiving in the social and collaborative era Adding to the mix of challenges around archiving is the volume and variety of unstructured information that organizations must now retain to meet their corporate governance standards, industry regulations and legal obligations. Email is the primary focus of most legal discovery, and it continues to grow in volume, with voicemail, pictures and video. Most employees already use instant messaging and collaboration tools, such as Microsoft SharePoint. This constant churn of document formats and users attempts to retain control of files and messages all contribute to complicating the storage environment. This results in large data repositories spread out across the organization, which are nearly impossible to consolidate and search. Typically, when IT staff tries to manage those data repositories with email quotas or expiry policies, it tends to trigger informal workarounds by employees who want to protect their email against corporate policies. These archives of unstructured data not only take up terabytes of storage, but they also spill out to portable media, web mail services and home PCs. They are difficult to search, prone to corruption, a burden on backup time and storage, and wasteful of employee time. And they are likely targets for legal or regulatory discovery. Archiving can help to protect, organize and search this unstructured information, providing an organized, searchable store of single-instance records, with capabilities to meet the demands of legal discovery. Deduplication, integrated storage management and self-service search offload work from backup systems and messaging and collaboration applications and satisfy user expectations for accessibility of emails and files. Symantec Enterprise Vault works with Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server to keep users connected to their enterprise data by automatically (via user-defined policies) moving older information out of SharePoint and into online vaults where it can be searched and accessed instantaneously.

7 7 Symantec Enterprise Vault for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 extends the value of SharePoint environments for collaborating and managing content by automatically archiving from document libraries, folders and files. This helps enterprises enforce retention policies, increase application performance and reduce the storage and costs associated with managing high volumes of electronic content. Adding SharePoint data to Enterprise Vault helps ensure compliance with corporate policies and litigation preparedness, since this data can be searched alongside other sources of data (such as file system data) using standard Enterprise Vault software tools such as Discovery Accelerator. How to evaluate and select the right archiving solution Selecting an archiving solution for email and other forms of unstructured data can seem like a daunting task. But keeping a few basic principles in mind can help with the process: Think long term: Select a product that is flexible enough to support changes in the business and computing environment. The chosen archiving solution should be able to maintain (or even enhance) performance levels as users, data and applications are added. Also take vendor viability into consideration. Consider manageability: IT departments are demanding manageability from archives similar to what they get from other applications. Secure, role-based administration and granular provisioning and reporting are the foundation of a good archiving solution. These manageability features simplify the delivery of archiving services and allow IT staff to associate archiving requirements with corporate policies to ensure that each user gets the information he or she requires.

8 8 Focus on content intelligence: Not all information is created equal, so organizations need to manage and retain different pieces of information based on their value. An archiving solution should include flexible classification, filtering and retention options, as well as support for both user-initiated and automated classification in some cases, it may need the ability to integrate with an existing enterprise content management system. A good archiving system should also offer intelligent filtering to delete irrelevant email before archiving and intelligent retention to keep archived email for the proper amount of time based upon classification. Optimize the total cost of ownership: While email archives often provide a quick return on investment from storage savings, a good solution should also provide technical and administrative functionality that helps lower the cost of administration and overall ownership of the archive. The idea is to reduce the administrative time spent on mailbox and message recovery, user complaints and legal discovery. Look for best-of-breed, open solutions: The archiving platform should be able to grow and integrate with other systems as the environment changes and expands. This means it should provide open application programming interfaces and broad support for long-term storage, as well as for structured and unstructured data. A good archiving solution should be storage-agnostic, working with a wide range of storage options and supporting tiered storage to help store each type of data in the most economical way. Look for a solution that can archive email and other unstructured content types, such as Microsoft SharePoint libraries and instant messages, as well as provide integration of third-party products.

9 9 Conclusion Symantec Enterprise Vault has been developed with these requirements in mind, automating the migration, storage and retention of structured and unstructured information in accordance with IT policies. The solution, which provides integrated content archiving, deduplicates information at the source, helping to improve performance, reduce costs and simplify management. Combined with Symantec NetBackup, it delivers an end-to-end solution for managing, protecting and archiving critical information across the enterprise, with accelerated backup and recovery to reduce the footprint of data stores protected by NetBackup. Whether an organization is looking for cost efficiencies through the cloud, aiming to meet sustainability objectives or e-discovery requirements, or looking to provide a more collaborative approach to end-users, an archiving solution makes business sense. Archiving is an essential component of an overall storage and backup solution, and taking a proactive approach can reduce business risk, save money and help the environment.

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