On Thu, 6 Sep 2012, David Parter wrote:
As many of us know, backups are not archives. Backups are for disaster
recovery, archives are to preserve specific data for a specific period
of time (perhaps "forever").
In reviewing (and revising to be significanly shorter) our backup
retention policy, I became aware that our users have (at least in their
mind) been relying on our backups to serve as archives (long term
storage).
Before I present the new backup retention policy, I would like to know
about options for data archiving. I am not even sure how to describe the
service, so google searches are not very helpful yet (mostly I found
tools for digitial archives of records that are not originally digital).
I asked others on campus, and no one seems to have an answer -- but they
all agreed it is something we need.
Do any of you have or know of any systems for data archiving?
From a user point of view, they would specify a collection of
files/directories (most likely an entire project area in the file
sytems) and ask that it be archived under some naming scheme, for a
specific period of time (at which point notification is sent to do
something -- extend the archive expiration date or delete the archive, I
don't know).
From a technical point of view... I don't know what the requirements
are. Obviously, we want to preserve the data. I am sure others have
already come up with requirements and solutions to avoid, detect and
hopefully correct bit rot...
So.. what is out there, what is the conventional name for such a service
or product, is anyone using it?
What is the purpose of these archives, and how do they really differ from
backups?
is it that there are quotas and archives don't count against the quotas?
is it that the data needs to be able to be recovered faster than your
normal backups?
is it that you need to be able to selectivly 'forget' the archive data (in
some legal environments you must have data back to a specific date, but
must not have any data older than that for example)
I question your first statement that backups are not archives. why, how
are they different?
from a purely technical point of view, your 'archive' could just be a
special set of backup media that's not part of your normal backup and
media rotation (although, if the archive is going to be useful, you still
need redundant copies, and to test them over time)
Or if you need faster or self-service recovery of data from the archive,
the archive could be a different set of storage, optimized for capacity
and cost rather than performance (and probably configured read-only as far
as users are concerned)
David Lang
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