Abstract

Recent times have seen a vast increase in the number of PC's deployed on company networks, as well as a significant increase in the drive space attached to those machines. This situation presents a growing problem for those responsible for both maintaining corporate networks and insuring the integrity and safety of corporate data. The increase in the enterprise data set translates to an increase in the amount of data on the wire, as it is sent over the network to be archived, as well as an increase in the amount of tape media that must be used to protect the data. Faced with an ever-increasing amount of data to support, it is becoming necessary to discover a means to identify business critical data, so that only the necessary files are committed to long-term storage,. At the same time, the non-critical data must also be tracked, so that machines can be fully recovered in case of machine failure.

In this paper we will discuss the concept behind our system of intelligently managing redundant and unneeded information in the enterprise. Our method employs a rule system that allows us to reduce or eliminate the redundant and useless information that we backup while still providing quick restore times in the event of data loss.

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