The distinction between backup and archive is useful. I'm not sure that '90 day usage' is the definitive boundary--we have scheduled year-end jobs that run only annually--but the categories make sense. However, it's not only about the data itself. Data is a structured mass of zeroes and ones that makes no sense at all without a means to render it intelligible.
Some time ago, we (IT) was asked to restore very old data needed by the Finance department. The data was years old, but as responsible corporate caretakers we found the tapes that contained the information requested. The kicker: it was IMS data, and IMS had been decommissioned here years earlier. Even if we could somehow wangle a temporary copy of IMS, the process of installing it was daunting as none of us had relevant experience. Moreover, there was no guarantee that a 'modern' version of IMS would be able to untangle ancient data formats. Finance eventually let us off the hook, but it was a lesson that still haunts us. . . J.O.Skip Robinson Southern California Edison Company Electric Dragon Team Paddler SHARE MVS Program Co-Manager 323-715-0595 Mobile 626-543-6132 Office ⇐=== NEW [email protected] -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Gabe Goldberg Sent: Sunday, October 07, 2018 6:11 PM To: [email protected] Subject: (External):Destination z article: Ensuring Data Storage Longevity 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. [email protected] 3401 Silver Maple Place, Falls Church, VA 22042 (703) 204-0433 LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/gabegold Twitter: GabeG0 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
