Choosing a data archiving strategy: Disk archiving vs. tape archiving

Data archiving is a vital process for many data storage environments for several reasons. First, archiving data, either for long term or short term, allows a company to go back into archived files to retrieve a specific piece of data for customers or themselves. Second, data archives are often kept for a specific number of years for government regulations. With this in mind, companies generally have three data archiving strategies they can choose from: disk archiving, tape archiving or both. What are the pros and cons of each method? Which is better for your company? Or, is it best to use a mixture of disk and tape for your data archives?

There are several advantages and disadvantages to disk archiving and tape archiving, so many organizations often choose a combination of disk and tape, using disk for short-term archives and then transferring archived data to tape for long-term retention.

"Everybody should use both," said Brian Babineau, senior consulting analyst at the Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG), Milford, Mass. "Your access requirements are going to vary, but in the first few years of your retention period, keeping it more accessible so you can get it back quickly is going to be critical. If you just need to keep it around and don't need to access it, tape becomes a logical choice for long-term archives."

Dean Flanders is the head of infomatics at Friedrich Miescher Institute (FMI), a biomedical research institute, and using both disk and tape for his data archives has served him well. For his short-term archives, he uses Oracle's Sun Storage Archive Manager to move data to disk. And every night, he archives his disk data over to his Spectra Logic tape system as well as an offsite tape storage facility.

"It makes sense to use a mixture of disk and tape," said Flanders. "Because you just have this security blanket knowing you have an extra copy of the data [on tape]."

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Source: searchdatabackup.techtarget.com
By: Megan Kellet