What is the default retention policy for your backups? If you are like most organizations we speak to, the answer is typically three or more years. The next question is why, as in why is your backup retention so long? The overwhelming number of restores, as in 90% or more come from the most recent backup copy, not from a copy that is five years old. In the StorageShort below, we discuss the backup retention phenomenon.
The answer to the why question is usually “just in case” the organization needs an old copy of the data in the future. “Just in Case” is a fair answer, but backup is not the right process for “just in case” data. The archive is the right place for “just in case” data. The problem is that most organizations count on backup as their archive because it is harder to feed data into the archive than it is to feed it into the backup. What if archive and backup were integrated so that IT could keep doing what it is comfortable with, using backup as an archive with long retention times, but have an archive capability that would enable robust search and granular retention of files?
Want to learn how to integrate backup and archive to solve data management and data privacy problems? Watch our on demand webinar “Data Management vs. GDPR and Data Privacy-Solve the Right to Be Forgotten Problem.”
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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