Data Privacy regulations like GDPR require that data be protected and managed differently than it has been in the past. Organizations need to prove they are protecting data, securing it, retaining it, and they need to, if a user requests it, remove all of a user’s data from their storage systems. Organizations are trying to make their backup solution address all of these demands. The problem is the backup process was never designed to address them.
At the heart of the problem for most customers is unstructured data. Because of the number of files that unstructured data represents, most backup solutions resort to an image backup, which is typically a faster way to backup data instead of a file-by-file backup. These image backups further compound the problems organizations face when trying to adhere to privacy regulations. They lose insight into the files which those backups contain.
Aparavi takes a different approach and integrates data protection and data management resolving issues with both and enabling organizations to comply with GDPR-like regulations. First, Aparavi provides a file-by-file backup but without compromising backup performance. After the first backup, ongoing protection of a file system is done intelligently and can finish in almost the same amount of time that a blind image backup will.
As Aparavi is protecting unstructured data, it also creates a rich metadata history about each file it is protecting. It knows the exact location of each file and each version of each file. The rich metadata enables Aparavi to move data to different storage mediums as the data ages, reducing the cost to store information. Aparavi even supports moving older copies of data it is managing to the cloud, so the organization doesn’t have to invest in additional on-premises infrastructure.
Aparavi can also service “right to be forgotten” requests because of its rich metadata. When a user requests the removal of their data from an organization’s storage system, IT merely searches Aparavi for all occurrences of that data and removes it from all backups. The organization can even use the log to prove to the user that it has taken the appropriate steps.
Aparavi also has value beyond just the right to be forgotten and data privacy. The software provides complete protection of all unstructured data stores. It also enables an organization to reduce its investment in on-premises production storage. Customers can enable Aparavi to remove old data, data that hasn’t been accessed for a while, from production storage, slowing the rate of investments in new storage systems.
While removing data from production storage may cause some concern for some IT professionals, Aparavi eases those concerns. First, it not only archives data it protects it. The same process that removes data also has direct access to the process protecting the data. The protection component ensures that the correct number of protected copies exist before removing the data. Second, users can still easily access their data. Aparavi provides a web platform to provide access to archived data allowing it to be retrieved globally from any device.
Conclusion
The way to solve emerging data management, data privacy, and data protection problems is not to race out and purchase a new software package for every situation. Instead, organizations should consolidate these various processes and let a single product manage them. Aparavi is an excellent example of a company doing just that.
George Crump is the Chief Marketing Officer at VergeIO, the leader in Ultraconverged Infrastructure. Prior to VergeIO he was Chief Product Strategist at StorONE. Before assuming roles with innovative technology vendors, George spent almost 14 years as the founder and lead analyst at Storage Switzerland. In his spare time, he continues to write blogs on Storage Switzerland to educate IT professionals on all aspects of data center storage. He is the primary contributor to Storage Switzerland and is a heavily sought-after public speaker. With over 30 years of experience designing storage solutions for data centers across the US, he has seen the birth of such technologies as RAID, NAS, SAN, Virtualization, Cloud, and Enterprise Flash. Before founding Storage Switzerland, he was CTO at one of the nation's largest storage integrators, where he was in charge of technology testing, integration, and product selection.
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