Backups, Archiving, and Life Cycle Management: Riding the Wave of Data Proliferation

Most IT organizations report exponential data growth over time, and whether your data doubles every year, every two years, or every five years, the simple fact remains that if your data capacities double, then both the capacity and the performance of your backup system must double. All of this doubling stresses traditional approaches to data management. Thus, it is no surprise that backup/recovery is one of the most costly and unforgiving operations in the data center. Meanwhile, most IT organizations also report that the vast majority of their unstructured data is seldom or never accessed. Files accumulate year after year, choking the backup systems and driving up costs.

This course explores two main ways to manage the data deluge: (1) optimize backup systems by eliminating bottlenecks, streamlining operations, and bulking up backup infrastructure; and (2) manage the life cycles of unstructured data so that files that are not in active use can be managed separately from files that are in active use. We start by offering a simple framework for defining business requirements and comparing solutions at a high level. We then delve into the various mechanisms for lifecycle management and for eliminating backup system bottlenecks. Some time is spent exploring storage systems that have built-in mechanisms for data protection and lifecycle management.