Storage Management Strategies for the CIO
Access "Long-term archiving"
This article is part of the Vol. 5 No. 8 October 2006 issue of What you need to know about data storage provisioning
Tracking regulatory requirements for data retention is tough enough, but restoring data from long-term archives is likely to be even harder. Some legislative requirements mandate that data be kept for as long as 70 years--that's the easy part. Having to restore a 70-year-old file is the hard part. Twenty years ago, mainframe backups were done on nine-track, 1-inch tape, while PC backups were likely put on 5.25-inch floppies or audio-cassette tapes. Trying to read any of those media today would be difficult, even assuming the media hadn't deteriorated past readability. Besides obvious issues like the device and removable media used for archiving, the data format used by the backup program and the format of the data itself, there are additional issues such as the usable lifespan of the media, the necessary keys for any encrypted data and--a really big one--the ability to find the name of the data file you want. If that's not enough to discourage you, you may also have to discover where the archive is stored and what specific piece of media actually holds the ... Access >>>
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What's Inside
Features
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- M&A stirs up standards
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Snapshot: Reducing tape use in backup
Is tape in your future?
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The right way to provision storage
Provisioning storage is still mostly a manual job, but solid planning, including the right interested parties and some improved tools, can help ease the chore. Follow these provisioning best practices to gain greater performance and higher disk utilization.
- Instant messaging shouldn't strain storage
- Virtual I/O aims to streamline network traffic
- Vendors debate different XAM strategies
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How to manage encryption keys
Encryption is an effective way to secure data. But managing encryption keys can be a major undertaking. While there are no encompassing key management tools available yet, some apps can help you keep track of proliferating encryption keys.
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- School expels outsourced backup, enrolls CDP
- Survey Says: Users name their 10GbE price
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Long-term archiving
With some legislative requirements mandating data be kept for as long as 70 years, your organization needs an archiving plan that defines what data needs to be kept and why. But don't overlook how you'll restore old data when it needs to be accessed.
- New Ethernet protocols could challenge iSCSI
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Case Study: Moving from Lotus Notes to Microsoft Exchange
Hyperion Solutions Corp. decided it could no longer cope with having two separate e-mail apps. Storage considerations were among the many hurdles the firm had to overcome. Here's how they did it.
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What storage managers are buying and why
The second installment of the 2006 edition of Storage magazine's exclusive Purchasing Intentions Survey reveals key storage technology purchasing decisions by storage managers across all industries.
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Columns
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Untangling the encryption chain
by Stephen Foskett
In many companies, data that should be safeguarded against loss or theft isn't getting encrypted. The main reason why so many storage managers are shying away from encryption is that they don't understand how it functions within the storage infrastructure.
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Outsourcing email archiving: the pros and cons
Outsourcing your e-mail archiving is a good alternative if you want to avoid the hassle of implementing archiving yourself. But right now, service providers are falling short and need to expand their product portfolios to meet user demands.
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Users don't care about storage and data, they only care about their own applications
Storage Bin: Users don't care about storage and data, they only care about their own applications, so it's essential to deliver IT as a transparent service.
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A whole new ballgame?
A whole new ballgame?
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Untangling the encryption chain
by Stephen Foskett
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