Archiving stakes its claim to lower TCO.As the amount of stored data in applications such as e-mail and document management explodes, many organizations are turning to solutions that combine the vast capacity of traditional archiving approaches with direct access to secondary disk storage, delivering recovery, or access times--which range from seconds to minutes. E-mails are archived by over half of the respondents In the context of marketing research, a representative sample drawn from a larger population of people from whom information is collected and used to develop or confirm marketing strategy. and an additional 14% are planning to archive them in the next 12 months. Last year's survey showed only 15% archiving e-mails [FIGURE 2 OMITTED] Archiving in Midrange midrange Epidemiology The halfway point or midpoint in a set of observations; for most data, MR is calculated as the sum of the smallest observation and the largest observation, divided by 2; for age data, one is added to the numerator; a midrange is usually Open-System Environments The notion of archiving, so familiar to the mainframe world, has gone a long way in penetrating the open systems environment, where archiving was often mistaken for backup. Backup and archiving are quite different although IT managers of small and medium businesses were slow to realize this. The past two years show a significant improvement in the understanding of the characteristics of archiving, as witnessed by the result of the survey illustrated in Figure 1. Archiving is treated as a separate application from backup by 58% (as compared to 50% in 2003, and 30% in 2001) of the population, with another 20% planning to set it up as a separate application within the next two years. Archiving concerns mostly large IT installations. Midrange sites tend to spend fewer resources on archiving, but the survey shows that midrange IT sites are where growth potential is the highest. The volume of data archived in open systems is low compared to proprietary mainframe environments, but this is looked upon as an opportunity for newer archiving technologies and the use of magnetic disk drive-based solutions. Overall, the volume of data archived nearline has significantly increased since last year, and is expected to grow again in 2005. Tape is by far the most popular media for archiving data, though optical disk is used for archiving by 40% (versus 30% in 2003) of the surveyed population and magnetic disk by 60% of the population, compared to 50% last year (Figure 2). Drivers for Archiving The primary driving force behind IT managers' adoption of archiving has traditionally been to reduce total cost of ownership (TCO (1) (Total Cost of Ownership) The cost of using a computer. It includes the cost of the hardware, software and upgrades as well as the cost of the inhouse staff and/or consultants that provide training and technical support. See ROI. ). The primary benefits for end users are a reduction in primary disk space and performance improvements, as expressed in faster response times. But, recent regulations have put pressure on businesses to store historical information, and corporate policy as well as government regulation dictates that data must remain accessible for years after it is collected. Over one third of the population said their data retention practices are driven by legal or regulatory requirements Regulatory requirements are part of the process of drug discovery and drug development. Regulatory requirements describe what is necessary for a new drug to be approved for marketing in any particular country. . Though cost is often thought to be the most important factor, it ranks third after data retrieval performance and scalability in the selection criteria for an archiving solution. Data is mostly archived by files, but content addressed archiving is used by half of the respondents and will grow 70% in the next two years (Figure 3). Half the population claims to achieve file retrieval in minutes or even seconds. [FIGURE 3 OMITTED] Information on the Survey The analysis is based on a survey of North American North American named after North America. North American blastomycosis see North American blastomycosis. North American cattle tick see boophilusannulatus. IT managers that was conducted from May through July of 2004 (2004 Backup and Archive--A User Perspective). Out of a population of 5,000 IT managers, over 600 qualified managers answered 30 screening questions. From this population of 600, a selected group of 110 responded to the full survey of over 200 questions. Participants met the criteria of having backup and/or archiving responsibilities for IT operations that store a minimum of 500GB of raw disk storage. Ten industries were primarily targeted in the survey: finance/banking, health, manufacturing, retail distribution, government, education, consulting, transportation, media/entertainment, and telecommunications Communicating information, including data, text, pictures, voice and video over long distance. See communications. . Sixty operations out the 1,300 report over 2 petabytes of SCSI/FC disk capacity, mostly in the transportation, entertainment, and telecommunication telecommunication Communication between parties at a distance from one another. Modern telecommunication systems—capable of transmitting telephone, fax, data, radio, or television signals—can transmit large volumes of information over long distances. industries. The majority of the respondents in education and consulting use less than 5TB in each of SCSI SCSI in full Small Computer System Interface Once common standard for connecting peripheral devices (disks, modems, printers, etc.) to small and medium-sized computers. SCSI has given way to faster standards, such as Firewire and USB. and ATA (1) (AT Attachment) The specification for IDE drives. See IDE. (2) See analog telephone adapter. ATA - Advanced Technology Attachment disk storage. Nearline archive capacity per site is highest for media/entertainment, finance/banking, and retail/distribution companies. For Additional Information The full Backup See backup types. and Archive report contains 171 figures summarizing site, industry, and revenue characteristics of the surveyed population as well as information on disk and tape backup Using magnetic tape for storing duplicate copies of hard disk files. Users can add an internal or external tape drive to their desktop computers for backup purposes, and files are typically copied to the tapes using a backup utility that updates on a periodic schedule. and archive installed base, trends and perceptions. The report can be ordered from www.tomcoughlin.com (under Technical Papers). A companion report based on the survey is also available covering Business Continuance The adjournment or postponement of an action pending in a court to a later date of the same or another session of the court, granted by a court in response to a motion made by a party to a lawsuit. and Disaster Recovery. Figure 1. Is archiving treated separately from backup? Yes, today 58% Plan within next year 20% No Plan 18% Don't Know 4% 665 Respondents Note: Table made from pie chart. Thomas M. Coughlin is president of Coughlin Associates (Atascadero, CA), and Farid J. Neema is president and founder of Peripheral Concepts, Inc. (Santa Barbara Santa Barbara (săn'tə bär`brə, –bərə), city (1990 pop. 85,571), seat of Santa Barbara co., S Calif., on the Pacific Ocean; inc. 1850. , CA) www.periconcepts.com www.tomcoughlin.com |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion