Ensuring Data Storage Longevity
Backup and Archival Data
Data comes in many varieties, related to why it exists and how it's
stored: active, warehouse, transactional, backup, archival and more.
I'll skip over the first three forms and focus on backup data (briefly)
and archival data (primarily).
Because backup data recovers from human error, equipment failures and
external catastrophes, its only reason for existing is restoring data to
a recent image. Archival data may be needed for legal or industry
compliance, historical recordkeeping, merger and acquisition due
diligence, unanticipated queries/searches, or reconstructing operational
environments. Backup data can be stored piecemeal as long as it can be
completely restored. Archival data is holistic, a complete/consistent
image. For a detailed explanation of why multiple backup copies—even
cloud storage—don't constitute archived data, see this Storage
Switzerland blog: https://bit.ly/2DzoJrR
http://destinationz.org/Mainframe-Solution/Trends/Ensuring-Data-Storage-Longevity
https://bit.ly/2NiJVSS
...for non-technical folk reading this (it's going to diverse lists) --
your data needs backup and archiving too. And backup still isn't archive.
--
Gabriel Goldberg, Computers and Publishing, Inc. g...@gabegold.com
3401 Silver Maple Place, Falls Church, VA 22042 (703) 204-0433
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/gabegold Twitter: GabeG0
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