(PRWEB) July 12, 2011

Now get Mimecast email archiving services as part of an integreated solution. This service can cut cost and complexity, giving system users instant secure access to every email ever sent or received. This results in reduced cost to store email, a lighter load for any server, and greater productivity.

Mimecast Email Archive is a cloud-based platform that securely stores all internal and external emails, resulting in a business never risking losing important data due to server, storage, budgetary or mailbox constraints.

The solution available for archiving emails has two components: the Mimecast Email Archive product, which offers the smartest possible way for business to store and access email, and Mimecast Archive Power Tools, which make searching even simpler for end users.

The Mimecast Email Archive is an infinitely scalable, secure, cloud-based archive that simplifies your email infrastructure. Email administrators benefit from centrally managed, granular email retention policy setting, which supports litigation hold and regulatory compliance needs. All stored messages are encrypted and tamper proof, proving evidential quality data for legal or regulatory purposes. Our Email Archive delivers a near real-time search capability and seamlessly integrates with Microsoft Exchange and Outlook.

Mimecast Archive Power Tools enhance the Mimecast Email Archive service. It replicates mailbox folders to provide users with a familiar structure when searching their personal email archive from within the Mimecast Webmail console or from Microsoft Outlook. Email Archive Power Tools also reduces the load on Microsoft Exchange by minimizing mailbox size and through automated message and attachment stubbing.

Benefits of using Mimecast Email Archive for your end users:

Technorati Tags: Archiving, Available, Email, Mimecast

Marietta, GA (PRWEB) August 01, 2011

Abacus Solutions, an IT infrastructure solutions provider, will be joining the Georgian Club for their monthly Technology Breakfast Roundtable on August 9, 2011 at 7:30am.

The Technology Roundtable will feature Abacus Senior Engineer and Document Archiving Architect, David Harmer. Harmer will discuss archiving digital records in today?s business world. IT compliance is a concern for most businesses today; legal requirements are forcing businesses to develop plans for archiving emails, documents, voice conversations, and many other types of data.

The session will address the topics of why and what records need to be archived; archiving requirements for today?s business world; how to handle eDiscovery and legal compliance and securing archived documents. Attendees will be invited to ask questions and discuss archiving in an open networking environment.

Harmer will then host a separate session following the breakfast that will look at the Enterprise Managed Archive (EMA) appliance in greater detail. The EMA is a premiere email archiving solution that meets the demands of large businesses as well as those of individual users. EMA easily integrates into any environment. Its standardized technology ensures that your data will remain usable no matter which mail server you choose to use in the future.

?The archival of digital records continues to be a topic of concern for IT departments,? said David Harmer. ?I am eager to engage in an in-depth discussion among members of the IT community to see what challenges they have faced and what solutions they have found to be effective.? EMA is one archiving solution that complies with all legal requirements and guidelines, while remaining user friendly and easy to manage.

About Abacus Solutions

Abacus Solutions strategically combines products, services and resources to deliver IT infrastructure solutions that solve your business needs. The company architects multi-platform enterprise-level, server, storage and networking solutions by offering technologies from leading vendors. Abacus offers solutions focused on the areas of virtualization, including server consolidation, desktop and thin client solutions, and high availability virtualization; enterprise storage and archival; comprehensive network solutions; and backup and business continuity. For additional information, call 1-800-605-5446 or visit abacusllc.com.

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Technorati Tags: Abacus, Archiving, Breakfast, Email, Engineer, Roundtable, Senior, Solutions, Speak, Technology

Ranging from business compliance to the performance of Outlook itself there are many reasons why in today’s world a company needs to look for a successful Outlook email archiving solution. There are a number of issues that businesses face with regards to email archiving and compliance below this article focuses on the more critical issues and some of the solutions to these problems. Whilst this article is focusing predominantly on businesses that use the Outlook and Microsoft Exchange systems much of what is discussed will be relevant to all businesses, particularly in the US and the UK.

Research has shown that the average worker can spend up to 90 minutes of every workday managing their mailboxes and performing archiving and data management tasks. This leads to loss of productivity to the entire business. Aside from the productivity issues most Exchange servers are only set to backup information once per day, meaning that any emails that have been deleted through the course of a day are not archived this can also be said to the auto archiving feature that Outlook has.  Also due to the way that the auto-archive feature works, finding a specific email that has been archived is incredibly laborious and time consuming.

There are several issues that need to be looked at with regard to the need for a good email archiving solution, these issues are outlined below.

Data flow over time

Before looking at any of the legal ramifications or performance problems of not having a good email archiving solutions it is important to first look at the points which create these issues.

Even smaller companies will generate massive amounts of emails over a long period of time.  This is caused by storage of emails and attachments, however part of the problem stems from having all versions of these emails stored for example: an email is sent out with a 1 MB attachment to every employee (30 people). Every reply to that email is also now being stored along with the original email text. Whilst the email sizes are not of any real significance at this point, over a period of a year with multiple instances of this example the storage required will add up, especially with taking into account the attachment being saved also.

Auto Archiving

Many businesses feel that they have no problems with archiving as they have the Outlook auto archiving in place for their company emails. This unfortunately is not as helpful as it may at first seem to be.  As mentioned earlier, any emails deleted prior to the auto-archive taking place are not archived.  This in itself provides massive issues with compliance which will be covered later. 

A common problem shared by all companies that rely on the Outlook auto archive tool is initially the build up of emails and more specifically the overall deterioration of performance from the Microsoft Exchange servers as a consequence of a large email volume.  As the Exchange servers fill with archived emails the system begins to slow and takes longer to perform each backup. The servers filling also increase the chance of a critical systems failure.

Outlook saves all email data as .pst files when it archives the old emails. Many .pst files will be created over time as bulk archives are created over a period of time. How often this happens depends on the specific settings a company has organised themselves and how many emails the company has sent and received within specifically set parameters. These parameters would be determined by the company’s individual settings.  The more data stored on a .pst file the slower the servers and Outlook will function for their various daily tasks such as a backup.

A more pressing concern with the way that Outlook auto archive functions however is that bulk email packages are saved as .pst files, specifically a maximum storage per file of 20 GB. 20 GB of space can store thousands of emails; if a .pst file is corrupted the information on every one of those emails can potentially be lost forever.  Aside from the difficulty for an individual to navigate these files to locate specific emails when called upon to do so, if the files are lost this can provide very costly issues with regard to compliance.

Compliance

The issues of compliance covers multiple different points that will affect companies to different degrees depending on what countries they are in or do business with. That said all of these points are worth understanding as the laws are quickly changing world wide to cover the issues raised by emails being regarded as legal documents. Whilst the specifics below are predominantly for the UK, other countries will have similar laws with different specifics laid out.

The public have the right to ask for copies of emails from public authorities. The authorities then have 20 days in which to provide the copies.

Individuals have the right to request for copies of personal data held about them by an authority or company. The authority or company then has a 40 day time frame for compliance; failure to comply can lead to heavy fines.

The highest possible award at a tribunal for unfair dismissal in the UK is £66,200. With more communication in the places of work happening via email, companies need to ensure that they have easy access to all possible evidence available to protect themselves

A wronged party has 6 years from the date that a contract has been breached or a civil wrong committed to bring a court action. With emails potentially being used by either party it is necessary for a company or organisation to be able to access any information required that was stored within those previous 6 years. This means it is paramount that an organisation has the best possible email archiving system available to them.  The system the organisation uses can make the difference between winning and losing a court action.  Furthermore inability to provide requested evidence can result in heavy fines depending on the nature of the court action, thus having the ability to store and easily find the information could avoid these fines before a court action ever reaches a court.

 

This is a piece of US legislation also affects any company outside of the US which is listed on NASDAQ or the New York Stock Exchange, including subsidiaries of US companies that are themselves based outside of the US. The Act states that any transactional data meet the requirement of the Act.  Furthermore the Act sates over several sections that an organisation’s IT department is obligated to be able to provide any and all electronic data pertinent to a potential case during the discovery period in the event of a lawsuit or investigation.  Simply put an organisation must be able to provide copies of any electronic data as requested during the discovery period, the period prior to a case where evidence is collected to prepare for the legal proceeding, to a legal action.  Failure to provide the evidence in the discovery period results in heavy fines which are weighted against the nature of the legal proceeding.

The Solution

Most of the problems outlined above are not new and have been occurring for years, however with the exponential increase in the use of computers and by extension email these problems have begun to be far more severe and obvious.  The only possible solution is for a company to utilise an email archiving solution. The qualities one should look for in an email archiving solution, as outlined by the problems listed above, are as follows:

Can function independently from the Outlook’s auto archive facility Allows for settings to be standardised with capacity for users to create and archive new email folders with ease A program that does not rely on storing emails in bulk but instead saves each email individually so as to avoid the issues of file corruption. However still provides the functionality to archive files at the same time A solution that allows for customised archiving structures allowing companies to tailor how and where the files are saved. A solution which allows for deletion upon archiving of the emails from Outlook to again avoid high email volume effecting Microsoft Exchange servers Intuitive design to negate the need for training or complications prior to use of the solution. A solution that saves emails in a format that is readable independently of Outlook

It is important that all these criteria be met at the very least when looking for a solution to email archiving with Outlook to avoid all of the problems listed above. In the end avoiding these problems could save your business time and money and avoid the issue of decreased productivity from staff spending too much time organising mailboxes.

MsgSave is an Outlook add-in designed to tackle all of the afore mentioned issues and many more. MsgSave is offered in 3 different versions to meet your specific needs. MsgSave is a product of Sarcophagus a leader in IT business solutions.

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Technorati Tags: Archiving, Businesses, Email, Need, Outlook, Solution

New laws and industry regulations continue to impact email communications, as do storage limitations and productivity concerns. This has resulted in IT messaging managers implementing email archiving solutions. Below are some of the top trends for email archiving in 2011.

Email archiving is a valuable tool for increasing end user productivity. Most users spend at least half an hour a day managing their inboxes when this time could be used instead for revenue enhancing activities. Many end users are demanding direct access to archived messages sans IT intervention. And therefore archiving solutions that empower users to restore lost mail, etc., are in high demand.

Stubbing is a feature in archiving that strips an email of its attachment replaces it with a stub file or link within the message and then stores the actual message in an archive. This has been the typical way of managing email storage, and, over time, organizations faced other challenges like increased administrative overhead, added management complexities, etc. Many expect to see an increased adoption of stub-free approaches to mailbox management that help overcome these challenges in the coming year.

Many companies are looking at a combined archiving and continuity solution, as there is an increase in demand for always-on email. Also organizations today have no tolerance for email downtime. The coming year will witness a large number of organizations looking at deploying archiving technology. This provides continuity capabilities, enabling the users to continue to receive messages even when the primary server is down.

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Cloud based archiving market revenue is expected to deliver more than 50 percent of the total archiving revenue market in a few years. The growing trends of unlimited storage needs, stub-free storage management, continuity requirements and compatibility with cloud-based email platforms foresees that adoption of cloud-based archiving solutions will outpace demand for on-premise offerings.

Current research indicates that mobility is the top priority for any organization, and this has resulted in many companies selecting archiving vendors who can provide users archiving access from their desktop, laptop or any mobile device. This trend will also lead more companies to evaluate cloud-based archiving solutions as end users cannot enjoy mobile access with on-premise archiving software deployments.

The security of data stored outside the network poses considerable concern for companies that are evaluating cloud based archiving solutions. In the coming year there will be a larger emphasis on cloud archiving vendors to validate system security in the three core areas, namely physical security, technical security and administrative security.

Email archiving solutions need to be fully integrated with legal discovery as nearly three out of four discovery orders require email to be produced as a part of the discovery process. 2011 will see companies turn to email archiving to help increase their agility in responding to pending litigation by enabling them to cull data and export search results for early case assessment—saving time and money.

The rise of social media usage, such as LinkedIn and Facebook, mean that an increasing number of organizations are assessing how they will preserve business-related social media interactions among employees. 2011 will see companies focusing more closely on implementing social media usage policies and automating enforcement by deploying a cloud-based social media archiving solution.

By analyzing future archiving trends, a company can provide insight into email usage and the patterns that cause waste. It can also determine the criteria that messaging managers should use to evaluate archiving solutions and decide on email archiving requirements.

Technorati Tags: 2011, Archiving, Email, Trends

Introduction

In the United States alone, there are more than 30 million surveillance cameras shooting over 4 billion hours of footage a week [1]. Diverse companies and organizations around the country use surveillance cameras to observe activity and monitor behavior. Regardless of the intent or purpose behind the surveillance camera, every organization must have a method in place for managing video content. In many states, legal policies require video surveillance data to be stored for extended periods of time—often up to a year or more. As digital data management regulations continue to grow, storing surveillance data ensures that an organization can defend itself in the face of legal or requirement inquiry, or simply continue to carry out its day-to-day operations without significant IT or monetary burdens. How does a company improve its data retention time and instill smart practices for exporting, storing and retrieving digital content? Enter Intelligent Archiving. In this white paper, we address the surveillance data retention dilemma and present an innovative approach to offloading and storing surveillance data.

The Retention Dilemma

Video surveillance systems place a high demand on storage. With a growing number of digital surveillance cameras and increased image quality, along with complicated retention requirements, organizations are facing critical data management and archiving strategy challenges. Every organization that uses a surveillance system is forced to address a burning question, “What do I do with the buildup of surveillance data? Do I create additional storage capacities to house it, or do I get rid of it?” Organizations simply cannot afford to purge their video surveillance records or suffer the consequences if data is tampered, lost or destroyed. In most retail stores, for instance, a victim has 180 days to file a claim about a particular incident that occurs in any given store, (i.e., a slip and fall case). If the retailer does not retain its video data for this amount of time, they could potentially be exposed to a claim that they are not able to defend by video—an extremely risky and costly situation. Beyond retail, many diverse businesses and organizations, such as governments, banks, education institutions and corporate offices, must have systems in place to retain their surveillance data, and one single organization can have two different quantities of surveillance data: a large percentage of non-critical data that needs to be stored for short periods of time (e.g., a few months), and a small percentage of critical data that must be retained for the long-term (e.g., years or decades). Furthermore, regulations mandate that the surveillance video footage not only be saved in a standard, original format, but it must also be retrievable in the same condition as it was captured. organizations, both large and small, automatic control over their digital data, resolving the retention time dilemma.

What Is Intelligent Archiving?

In order to simply meet retention requirements, many organizations have been using their traditional data storage methods, such tape, hard drive backups or placing physical hard drives on a shelf. However, these methods can be outdated, costly and unreliable. While conventional methods can get the storage job done, Intelligent Archiving is an all-in-one approach that integrates with existing surveillance workflows to provide a streamlined, automated data management tool. Intelligent Archiving reduces costs without purging data, ensuring that surveillance data is:

Automatically stored in its original, intended format to guarantee authenticity
Easily accessible and retrievable
Selectable by camera to discern between active and inactive data
Indelibly labeled for professional distribution

 

Blu-ray Media: The First Component of Intelligent Archiving

Optical disc storage plays an influential role in establishing and maintaining the accuracy and reliability of digital data. Blu-ray discs were developed to meet the capacity demands of high-definition video and have long been the champion in the video media industry. As a result, this technology is a foundation upon which Intelligent Archiving is built.

Blu-ray Quick Facts:

A single layer disc can hold 25GB of data, a dual layer disc can hold 50 GB
Up to 9 hours of high-definition or 23 hours of standard-definition video can be stored on a 50 GB disc
A single dual-layer 50 GB Blu-ray disc can hold the same amount of data as 10 DVDs Blu-ray
technology is extendable, and includes support for multi-layer discs
Blu-ray has a data transfer rate of 4.2MB bytes per second
BD has a lifespan of 50+ years
Blu-ray’s increased storage capacity provides low cost per TB

Traditional tape/hard drive technology and complicated manual data back-up processes do not stand up to the demands of video surveillance storage. Magnetic tape is sensitive to environmental conditions, highly volatile and is not portable or distributable. Although hard drives are relatively inexpensive to acquire, HD retention capabilities are unreliable, making it a costly archive solution in the long run. For instance, 1TB hard drives are designed to be consistently powered on in order to check and authenticate data. While an HD archive sits unpowered on the shelf, without automatic self-correction, video data is susceptible to loss and uncorrectable errors. Compared to these conventional storage mechanisms, Blu-ray technology delivers the longest lifespan, best security and least risky migration capabilities for video media—making it the only fully complaint, true archiving technology and the industry choice in digital storage.

True Archiving Technology

Durability: The surface of Blu-ray media is protected by hard coating, making discs resistant to scratches and fingerprints without compromising the traditional look and feel.
High Performance: Video data stored on Blu-ray can be searched for and randomly accessed with uncompromised speed. Blu-ray access times are 200 milliseconds, and BDs have the potential to acquire even higher speeds in the future.
Future-proof: Due to the WORM (Write Once Read Many) media structure, data that is written to a Blu-ray disc is permanent and likely to last longer than any CD or DVD. In addition, the technology is supported by hundreds of world-wide organizations, ensuring media and drives to read it will be available years into the future to fulfill the nation’s growing compliance requirements.
Go Blu to Go Green: Blu-ray technology is well suited for archiving infrequently accessed or static information, meaning that disc drives only need to be powered on when video data is being written or read—a quality that is efficient in both energy and cost. Plus, Blu-ray has a TUV certification of ‘B’, making it the lowest energy consumption of all data storage technologies [2].

 

The Architecture of Intelligent Archiving – Export, Distribute and Archive

Blu-ray’s superior storage capacity, durability, permanence and overall performance capabilities have paved the way for new approaches to archiving. One of the most significant of these approaches is Intelligent Archiving. In order to answer the retention dilemma and fill the need for a streamlined, automated exporting and archiving tool for surveillance data, a solution must incorporate software and hardware technologies. Therefore, the architecture of Intelligent Archiving is multi-leveled. Building off of Blu-ray technology, this approach recognizes the need to integrate intelligent software with robust hardware capabilities in order to seamlessly automate the surveillance export, delivery and archive process. The result is a hands-free operation that cuts labor and errors, decreasing the amount time and money that is spent on managing complex business processes. All the while, zero surveillance data needs to be destroyed or purged.

Export: While the surveillance data exporting process can and be done manually, with individual PC disc burners, for example, managing video content by hand is a security risk that often results in errors, potential loss of data or video hijacking. With the Intelligent Archiving approach, a software component is first used to discern critical incident data that can be immediately exported from the surveillance system. Second, the hardware mechanism ensures that one or many video clips are automatically exported to Blu-ray discs. An automated export process ensures that data is properly managed, includes a viewer on the disc and a reliable backup management system is in place.

Distribute: The optical disc is the only modern media type that has enough space on the surface to clearly and permanently print the recorded content. As a result, Blu-ray discs containing exported content are inherently ready to be clearly and professional delivered as necessary.

Archive: By nature of the Blu-ray media, discs containing exported content are ready to be used for long-term and secure shelf archive. The Blu-ray technology ensures that the lifespan of the video content and the tools used to read it are viable now and into the future. Data on Blu-ray media is fully compliant, access times are efficient and data retrieval is cost effective.

Intelligent Archiving recognizes that the frequency of surveillance video recall declines over time. Not only does this approach ensure that the scope of an organization’s video storage plan is smart and secure both now and for the future, but it enables the user to select which camera data sets they want to permanently archive, giving users ultimate control over the retention dilemma. By using the Intelligent Archiving approach, an organization can choose which data is important to keep online, and what can be immediately sent to archive, extracting important incidents and storing the rest.

Conclusion

Whether it’s to comply with regulatory compliance and internal standards, manage evidence or to avoid claims, theft or vandalism, organizations of all varieties simply cannot afford to lose surveillance data. Video content must be centrally managed in order to ensure safe, long-term storage, easy accessibility, and random future playback, while also providing seamless organization. Intelligent Archiving is structured to solve these critical content distribution, management and long-term archiving needs. Not only is the approach designed to provide an automatic video archiving tool that protects critical information, but it is a smart exporting resource that gives users ultimate control over surveillance data management.

In this paper, we’ve discussed the architecture behind Intelligent Archiving. Rimage’s Surveillance Solution is an all-in-one model that provides all the benefits of this intuitive archiving approach. End users who have a volume of surveillance incidents and need an automated tool for professional distribution, as well as those who have defined data retention requirements and need to retain video content for long periods of time, can maximize their time and budget investments with Rimage’s Intelligent Archiving solution.

Rimage has long been a leader in delivering best in class standards for direct-to-disc thermal printing and workflow-integrated digital publishing solutions, and Rimage software modules have the flexibility and power to integrate into almost any workflow and business process. Surveillance Publisher and Rimage Surveillance Archiver completely automate the process of exporting content for publishing and managing long-term archiving on Blu-ray and/or DVD media. Surveillance Publisher is a streamlined data distribution process that quickly exports surveillance video. Surveillance Archiver shrinks active content by automatically archiving historic content on a set schedule, based on size or date and time criteria. Both components capture and print video meta-data directly to the disc for easy identification, automatically span large datasets to multiple discs, and ensure that exported/archived content can be viewed on any Windows based computer with a DVD or Blu-ray reader.

How the Rimage Surveillance Solution Works:

Network video recorder (NVR) collects digital camera data.
Incidents are selected and exported to labeled DVD or Blu-ray Discs.
Storage or time threshold is reached in the NVR.
Data is automatically sent to Blu-ray Discs for archive.
Discs are indelibly labeled for evidentiary use or recall.

Learn more: www.rimage.com/surveillance.

According to recent research, the video surveillance market is expected to tipple by 2012, with global storage requirements reaching more than 3.3 exabytes (3,300 petabytes) [3]. For every organization that utilizes video surveillance, a loss of digital data can result in a loss of vital business information, credibility, and ultimately, a loss of competitive value. Intelligent Archiving provides a scalable approach to video data exporting and archiving, protecting digital assets and ensuring business viability now and in the years to come.

Sources:[1] Milestone White Paper: Best Practices in Video Surveillance Storage [2] Blu-ray Jukebox website: http://www.blurayjukebox.com/optical_archiving.html [3] QSTAR Technologies: http://www.qstar.com/

ABOUT RIMAGE:

Rimage Corporation is the world’s leading provider of workflow-integrated digital publishing solutions that produce CD/DVD/Blu-ray Discs with customized content and durable color or monochrome disc labeling. Key vertical markets and applications for our systems include video workflows, retail, medical imaging and law enforcement.

Headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Rimage is a global business with operations in North America, Europe and Asia. Rimage has been in business since 1978 and became publicly owned in 1992. (NASDAQ – RIMG)

Visit www.rimage.com. for more information.

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Technorati Tags: Archiving, data, Dilemma, Intelligent, Retention, Solving, Surveillance

I. Executive Summary

There is no question that we live in the age of information. The focus of the world economy has shifted from physical production to the importance of data: statistics, facts, figures, numbers and records are highly valued in the business world. As this shift continues, the importance of information in a business escalates. Nearly all of a professional organization’s data exists in an electronic format, and as the value and volume of data increases, so does the demand for adequate storage space to house it.

The solution? Data archiving.

Companies have large amounts of data, and a large percent of it needs to be retained. Only 25% of the data within an organization is freshly created; the rest is redundant data, or data that was created in the past and must be preserved for future reuse.

This situation has created a high demand for information storage, a demand that carries both monetary and logistic concerns. Data archiving allows organizations to efficiently retain this mass of redundant data, often for very long periods of time, so that it can be accessed when necessary.

II. Why Archive?

To put it simply, an organization’s electronic data is a valuable asset and needs to remain available over time. In today’s fast-paced world, data archives are no longer a luxury. Effective, reliable and affordable archiving technology is quickly becoming a necessity for many content-intensive applications.

Data archives help professional organizations achieve three main goals: 

• Protect and retain data for the future
• Meet the world’s increasing data storage needs
• Live up to the world’s compliance and legislation requirements

 

Protect and retain data for the future

From contracts to medical records, employee documents to client communications, organizations expend a great deal of time and energy on creating, managing and maintaining electronic documentation.

As a result of the influx of electronic data, and the importance it carries, a significant amount of a company’s data holds significant value.

Once this electronic data and documentation had been created, it must be managed and protected. In order to safeguard important data, technologies and practices must be in place that enable an organization to a) defend against data loss, destruction and failures, and b) proceed logically and cost effectively in the event that information is exposed to detrimental effects.

Many organizations already have backup systems in place that allow them to save and protect data. So what is the difference between a data archive and a data backup?

A data archive is a storage device that is used to house data for long-term preservation. Data archives store and protect historic data that is not needed on a day-to-day basis, but is important and necessary for future reference, such as information that must be retained for regulatory compliance. Data archives are indexed for search optimization—files can be located and retrieved quickly and easily. The technology commonly used for data archives are tape drives, hard disk drives and optical Blu-ray™ media.
A data backup is a large repository that is used to store multiple copies of data. The backup is used to restore data in case it is corrupted or destroyed. Typically, data backups are used more for storage and less for retrieval. In contrast to data archives, backups are not indexed or designed for swift data location and recovery, and the data has a shorter retention period. The technology commonly used for data backups are tape drives and hard disk drives.

 

The two key differences between a data backup and a data archive are the length of data retention and the ability to retrieve the data. Data archives not only offload content from primary, short-term storage to safe, long-term storage, but they retain information for future use and for frequent recall—all at a low cost. This ensures that important data remains safe, retrievable and easily accessible for decades. Furthermore, as archives streamline data storage and recovery processes, productivity increases.

Meet the world’s increasing data storage needs

In the last five years, the amount of electronic data that needs to be retained has outgrown online storage capacities. Currently, there is a gap in data storage capabilities. Data that is stored on local or personal hard drives or online tapes remains static and unprotected.

One significant reason for the lack of adequate storage space is that IT departments have not been able to keep up with the sustained rapid growth of data. Consequently, they have had limited resources to work with in order to efficiently and cost effectively manage current storage needs, as well as create new capacities. As a result, many organizations began meeting their data storage requirements by purchasing extra hard disk space and adding servers. Although effective in the short term, these methods tend to clog up networks and waste valuable online space. In addition, duplicate data is often stored and backed up many times over, eating up storage room that could be better and more efficiently utilized.

The growth of electronic data is certainly not dawdling, and space continues to run short. Hence, the need for additional offline storage becomes crucial for both cost and efficiency reasons. Data archives can fill the gap that this data race has created, allowing companies to increase efficiency, manage old and current data more effectively and reduce storage costs.

The data-storage gap results in:

• Inactive and active data being managed and maintained in one ineffective storage bundle
• Stored data being unable to be recalled or recovered quickly and easily

 

Data archives can meet storage needs by:

• Moving data from online storage space to offline storage capacities, thereby liberating space for new, more current data
• Reducing storage management costs by implementing affordable, logistical and automated data management systems

 

Fulfill the world’s compliance and legislation requirements

Thousands of regulations exist today that require record retention, and many mandatory compliance standards are in place to ensure thatoriginal records can be reproduced unaltered. From FDA regulations to Sarbanes-Oxley standards, industries world-wide find themselves under a mountain of highly specific, strict and standardized compliance and legislation requirements. In addition to compliance standards, companies that face tough litigation issues must often produce documents and other information to be used as evidence in courts of law.

Clearly, electronic documents and records play an increasingly important role in these areas—contracts, medical records, e-mails, financial records and images are only a few examples of information that organizations may need to recall under compliance and legislation requirements. As a result, innumerable world-wide professional organizations must have good archiving architecture in place to store and manage their electronic data as well as have the capabilities to produce original, authentic information at random and unpredictable times. By nature of their technology, data archives can fulfill this need.

Compliance and legislation require companies to:

• Retain vital information for extended periods of time
• Store & manage original records they can be recalled in their initial and unaltered form, and persons with unauthorized permissions are denied access to such records
• Maintain data so that it can be easily navigated on retrieved

 

Effective data archives ensure that data is:

• Available for recall for years or decades
• Secure from unauthorized access and modification
• Easily recallable with random access

 

III. The Technologies of Archival Storage

The three technologies that are currently available for data archiving are:

• Hard disk drives (HDDs)
• Tape drives
• Optical media

Hard disk drives – successes and failures

Hard disk drives are routinely used in online or near-line storage archives, which have a role in nearly every aspect of the digital world as we know it today. People and organizations keep significant amounts of data on various versions of HDDs. MP3 players, cell phones, personal business computers, web applications and corporate storage systems are some examples of disk drives used around the world. HDDs are widely used because they are manufactured with affordable magnetic drives that have large individual capacities. These capacities are used to store significant amounts of space-hogging data, such as music, records and video. Although hard disk drives can be effective means of data storage, they are not the perfect archive. When it comes to HDD archiving, there is good news and bad news.

First, the good news:

 

• Accessibility. Data on HDD archives can be rapidly accessed. Whether a hard disk drive is being used as primary or secondary storage, data can be retrieved in a matter of seconds. • Affordability. Over the years, the cost of near-line HDDs has been driven down, making them more affordable in terms of acquisition than higher performance HDDs used in primary storage. • Compliance. Hard disk drives have the basic capabilities needed to meet compliance and regulatory requirements, ensuring that data can be recalled in its original, intended format.

 

Now for the bad news:

• Long-term retention? Not likely. It’s true that HDDs have the basic archiving capabilities to meet storage needs. However, HDDs are normally only designed for a 3-5 year life span. For organizations that need to reproduce data ten or fifteen years down the road due to compliance and legal regulations, this does not bode well.
• Out with the old. Hard disk drives are not designed for unpowered shelf storage. HDDs are designed to heat up only when powered on, and they tend to fail more rapidly when they are sitting unpowered on a shelf. Therefore, offline management of old information is simply not possible with this form of archive technology.
• What goes up stays up. Power and air conditioning consumption are significantly high contributors to HDD operating costs. Furthermore, as a result of their short lifespan, migration to new disk drives is necessary every 3-5 years. Throw in the time and money spent on reliability issues and what happens? The organizational and environmental costs go up— just when they need to go down.
• To err is the nature of HDD. Mistakes happen, which is why humans often rely on technology to perform certain automated tasks with both added speed and reliability. So what happens when technology fails? When it comes to HDD archives, this is an important question. While hard disk archives can be made readily accessible, they are also subject to two types of readability errors: operational and latent failures.

 

Hard disk drive readability failures

HDDs have a tendency to fail as a result of readability errors, which are either operational or latent in nature. Both types hinder the ability of HDDs to reliably archive data, yet the two failures behave differently.

Operational failures often occur when data cannot be written to the disk drive because the HDD itself has stopped working. Latent failures occur when the disk drive works—data can be written to the HDD, but electronic or mechanical errors prevent the content from being retrieved. Latent errors are the dominant source of errors in HDD archiving.

Latent failures are a little more complex than operational failures, simply because there are several factors that can cause them to occur, and these factors are often lurking, unseen and undetected, until it’s too late.

The causes of HDD latent failures

Latent failures cause hard disk drives to be unreadable and unstable.

Causes of latent failures include:

• Thermal instability and self-demagnetization: When an HDD’s thermal energy, or the internal energy created by the HDD system and components, is at room temperature, the bits stored on the drive are slowly disordered. As a result, thermal decay occurs. Unpowered hard disk drives are more susceptible to areas of data loss due to thermal decay.
• Corrosion: The internal components of the disk drives are subject to corrosion, including the media, motor parts and connectors. The most severe type of corrosion occurs on the media itself. If corrosive sites develop on the disk platter, data loss could result.
• Particulate infiltration or contamination: It is simpler than it sounds—airborne contamination settles on the disk surface, often rendering it unreadable. This phenomenon can either create a site for possible corrosion or data loss.
• Out-gassing: Out-gassing usually refers to release of detrimental vapor from the HDD cartridge’s internal parts or hard case over time. Out-gassing can deposit detrimental films upon the disk platter, which leads to a loss of space or a severe chemical reaction. This process ultimately results in data loss.
• Adhesive breakdown: Some HDD components, such as the filter and desiccant inside each disk, are mounted with adhesives. This adhesive might break down due to time, temperature or humidity, causing the filter to loosen. In turn, this can cause the internal components to rub or make contact with the disk, resulting in areas of non-recoverable data.

 

To add insult to injury, there is significant research that shows HDD latent errors increase over time. Near-line HDDs (the most common form of archive HDDs) are more likely to develop latent errors than Enterprise HDDs. In one study, 3.45% of 1.53 million disks developed latent errors, and this percentage increased super-linearly for near-line disk drives. Furthermore, drives that have experienced errors are more likely to develop additional errors in the future.

So the question remains, what good is your data if it can’t be read? The negative consequences to an organization’s time, data and finances as a result of HDD readability issues are plentiful.

When it comes to archiving and hard disk drives, the good does not always outweigh the bad. Due to the increased volumes of electronic data, the ever-growing demands of data archives are beginning to outpace the industry’s ability to create adequate HDD storage capacities. The progressive amount of digital data stored on the internet, as well as the growing amounts of information being stored on personal computers and servers, has created a demand for additional offline storage capabilities that prohibit HDDs from becoming an effective archiving tool. In addition, readability failures, as well as high operational costs and the inability of HDDs to retain data for the long-term, significantly compound the issue. The long-term storage deficiencies of hard disk drives make this technology a less than optimal archiving option.

Tape drives – good for backup, bad for archive

A tape drive is a data storage device that uses magnetic tape to read and write data. The tape itself is primarily packaged in a cassette or cartridge, which is then loaded into the drive. Individual drives can be connected to computers via cable connections, such as SATA, USB or FireWire, while multiple tape drives are often housed in autoloaders or large tape libraries. These devices often include built-in barcode readers that identify the tapes and an automated system that loads the tapes into drives—no human intervention is necessary.

The greatest benefit of tape drives is that they are able to store tremendous amounts of data. Tape drive capacities can range from a few MB to over 100 GB, well exceeding the storage capabilities of hard drives and network storage. However, this benefit comes with one large drawback: their accessibility rates are significantly slow. Tape typically offers sequential data storage (versus the random storage capabilities of disk drives), and access to data on tape can take anywhere from a few seconds to two or three minutes. Despite their bulk and lazy retrieval times, tape drives are capable of transferring linear streams of large amounts of data at once. It is for this reason that tape drives are most commonly used for data back-up.

Although the data storage capacity is there, tape drives are not a reliable choice for data archiving needs, as they are not designed to read or write individual files. In addition, tape is fundamentally rewritable—a huge drawback when considering any regulatory and compliance requirements. Compatibility is also not a tape drive’s strong suit. Tape standards tend to change every decade, some times more frequently than that. This means that almost every tape format is proprietary and not backwards compatible. When efficiency is paramount, updating drives to current standards or adjusting technologies according to different manufacturers and suppliers is not an effective means to an archiving solution.

Here is the good and bad news about tape archives.

The good news:

 

• Low incremental cost. Most organizations already have some form of a tape drive in place for data back-up purposes, which means little additional costs if the same drive were to be used in place of primary storage. In addition, the power consumption of tape is low, resulting in low operating costs. • Long-term retention. Old information can be removed and stored off-line, and the average life span of tape is 7-10 years.

 

The bad news:

• Incompatibility. Because tape technology changes every decade or sooner, tapes that store data now may not be accessible or readable when the next technology turn comes around. The result is more out-of-pocket costs to keep up with tape’s demanding equipment and software upgrades.
• Rewritable technology. By design, tape is extremely rewritable. Additional technology is required to force tape drives to be alteration-resistant or WORM (Write Once Read Many). Tape’s decade-long lifespan ensures that data is stored for a significant period of time. However, a long storage life does not guarantee that the original data can be recalled unaltered in the future. When it comes to compliance and regulatory issues, forget about it. Tape simply would not stand a chance in a court of law.
• Slow access times. For all intents and purposes, data stored on tape drives is accessible. However, tape is best suited to sequential access. Due to tape’s need to spool, data retrieval times lag. Ultimately, slow retrieval time results in an unmanageable and unpredictable archive technology.
• Vulnerability. Although old data can be removed from the drive and stored off-line, tape is vulnerable to electro-magnetic radiation, and it requires regular maintenance to prevent tapes from adhering together. As a result, support staff needs to be on-hand in order to condition the tapes on a consistent basis.

 

As an archiving technology, the discussion of tape drives is nearly a moot point. Over the years, tape has been a reliable data backup source, one with little user intervention. In addition, tape system speeds have advanced and capacities have grown. However, in the face of recent Internet developments and the current global economy, tape backup and restoration times remain too slow, inhibiting this technology from keeping pace with the growing demand for effective and efficient archives. Furthermore, this technology has been outmatched by the lowered cost and increased availability of hard drive storage. Long story short, the shoe does not fit.

Optical discs – a reliable data archive choice

Most people are familiar with Blu-ray discs’ high-quality ability to store video, games and other interactive content. However, this form of optical media is also a superior choice when it comes to data archiving. Optical archives use Blu-ray disc technology to record a wide array of data and store it in near-line or offline capacities. While HDD storage is a good option for short-term information storage, and tape drives are an efficient means of backing up data, these technologies do not consistently meet the most critical needs and requirements of data archives: safe, long-term data retention and easy accessibility. Not only is optical media designed for the demands of today’s video industries, it also serves as a durable, reliable and sustainable data archiving solution now and into the future.

The primary benefits of optical media archiving include:

• Reduced risk of data loss
• Reduced storage costs
• Long-term data retention, durability and compatibility
• Low cost, low power and minimal carbon footprint over time

 

Reduced risk of data loss

Blu-ray media is 100% WORM, meaning that while the original data stored on the disc cannot be altered, it can always be accessed. This is great news when it comes to compliance and legislation requirements. Optical technology’s standard, built-in features ensure that information cannot be erased, altered or accessed without proper authorization—the original file will be there when you need it, with its integrity intact, guaranteed.

Reduced storage costs

A Blu-ray disc is the same physical size as a standard CD or DVD. The differentiating factor between the three types of optical media is that Blu-ray disc technology uses a blue-violet laser, which is a shorter wavelength than the standard red laser used with CDs and DVDs. This enables a standard Blu-ray disc to contain up to 50 GB of data, and disc manufacturers have announced plans to create 100 GB discs in the near future.

In addition, Blu-ray technology has built-in support for multi-layer/extended format features, meaning that as storage capacity requirements grow, so can a single piece of Blu-ray media. In the not-too-distant future, 4-layer Blu-ray storage capacities are expected to accommodate as much as 200 GB of data.

Long-term data retention, durability and compatibility

The average lifespan of a Blu-ray dual-layer 50 GB disc is 20 to 100 years. Two physical factors contribute to the superiority and dependability of optical media.

First, Blu-ray discs contain a protective hard-coating on the outside surface, making scratches and fingerprints a non issue. In addition to the built-in WORM support, which ensures that the data stored on the disc will not be harmed by internal or external forces, Blu-ray’s advanced coating technology helps to protect the disc itself from physical damage. These features create a sort of double-whammy protection effect, shielding data from most dangers.

Second, optical media is created in industry standard formats: ISO 9660 and UDF, both of which are backwards compatible. These formats are supported in all major operating systems: Windows, Linux, UNIX and MAC OS. In other words, optical media is highly compatible, assuring that both now and years ahead, Blu-ray discs can be utilized and read by a standard PC. (Further proof: CDs from 25 years ago are still readable today by a standard PC.) There is no need to worry about the proprietary issues that are associated with tape drives—optical media will not out-grow the technology and standards surrounding it, and vice versa. The long lifespan and highly standardized compatibility of Blu-ray media guarantees that original data can be recalled from storage, and files on the disc can be randomly accessed at any time, without having to spend resources on software and technology upgrades.

Low cost, low power and minimal carbon footprint over time

Over time, Blu-ray discs are more economical than hard disk drives. Blu-ray ownership costs are low because:

• Blu-ray discs can hold a significant amount of data, and have inherent technology that allows additional layers and content to be added at a low cost.
• Blu-ray media has the longest shelf life of all data archive solutions.
• Blu-ray’s wide capabilities and platform support drastically reduce the need to migrate to new technology.

 

The cost benefits of optical media ultimately translate into environmental benefits. Optical media is the data archiving technology with the lowest energy consumption, fulfilling another major requirement of today’s data storage needs: environmental sustainability. Here’s why:

• Optical media is a passive storage device, requiring no energy over decades of storage—it does not consume any power when it is not being utilized to access data and information.
• The energy consumption required to operate and run Blu-ray media is extremely low due to the use of shared resources.
• Blu-ray media generates a significantly low amount of heat, which in turn means that little to no energy is spent on cooling capabilities.

 

When it comes to data archiving, optical media storage is a robust and reliable option. Blu-ray discs are specially formatted for the wide demands of the ever-growing video industry—a clear advantage over disk drives and tape drives. Second, optical archiving technology is dependable, durable and will be available for the long haul. Furthermore, the low operating costs of optical media ensure that an organization’s data archive leaves a small carbon footprint and more money in the bank.

As a result of its robust nature, optical media fully supports the increasing demands of compliance and legislation requirements. These requirements include:

• Long -term record retention
• Reproduction of original, unaltered record
• Quality archiving architecture in place for compliance and legislation

 

IV. Conclusion

In our digital world, electronic data permeates and dominates business industries across the globe. As our world economy continues to be more information-based, mass amounts of electronic data continue to accrue, and this growth is by no means slowing down. As a result, the world’s need for data archiving is ever-growing, placing more and more demand on professional organizations to ensure reliable archiving technology is in place to save and protect their electronic data. Data archives are not a luxury; rather they are a necessity in today’s fast-paced society.

The technologies that are currently available to perform archiving tasks are hard disk drives, tape drives and optical Blu-ray media. The question is: Which archiving technology provides the financial and organizational benefits in one trustworthy package? The answer is optical media.

HDDs are effective in the short term, but are prone to operational and latent failures that prove this technology to be an unreliable and unsafe data archiving tool. Tape drives have been exceedingly effective in the data back-up industry, but their high-maintenance and technology turnover do not put them in a noteworthy position for an effective data archiving option. Hard disk drives and tape drive technologies do not meet the most critical need: long-term retention. Blu-ray discs are durable, specially formatted for the popular media industry and have a 20 to 100-year life span. Optical media meets all data archival needs while also fulfilling cost and efficiency demands, surpassing the capacities of both tape disk drives.

Sources

1.  Hughes, G. F., Reliability and Security of D2D Backup Storage Systems Using SATA Drives, Technical Report 2004-01, Information Storage Center, UCSD.
2.  Elerath, J., Hard Disk Drives: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly, File Systems and Storage, Volume 5, Number 6, October 2007.
3.  Bairavasundaram, L. N., et. al., An Analysis of Latent Sector Errors in Disk Drives,SIGMETRICS2007, San Diego, CA.
4.  Iomega, Estimated 30-Year Shelf Life for Iomega REV Removable Disks, Technical White Paper, February 2007.
5.  Bandic, Z. Z., and Victora, R. H.,Advancesin Magnetic Data Storage Technologies, Editorial, Proceedings of the IEEE, November 2008.
6.  www.disc-group.com, Whitepaper Sustainable Archival Storage,”The Benefits of Optical Archiving”

Blu-ray is a trademark of the Blu-ray Disc Association

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