Best Practices for Data Archiving

Corporations depend on the flow of information to conduct their business. From accounting to production to marketing to personnel, the information procured, generated, organized, and stored by an organization represents a significant portion of the output of its workforce. Protecting that information from unexpected disasters is not only prudent, in many cases, it’s mandatory for legal and regulatory reasons.

To effectively protect its information, an organization must balance the cost of the protection against the value of the information. The right approach involves a synthesis of appropriate policies, procedures, personnel, and products. This paper explores the design and implementations of such systems. The paper covers many of the best practices that help such systems provide the best Return on Investment (ROI) for data archive solutions:

• Policies—Organizations need to plan in advance for disasters or fall prey to them.
• Procedures— An organization needs to implement procedures that are simple to administer and maintain.
• Personnel—The staff should be empowered to monitor the system centrally with minimal effort and training.
• Products— The product chosen to support the archival system should meet the organization’s needs. The architecture should support the full range of operating systems (OSs) and applications used by the organization.

The choice of the appropriate product to support data archiving can help make the process both secure and cost effective. By understanding how the product supports the policies, procedures, and people in an organization, IT has the parameters they need to make the proper decision about the product they should choose to protect their organization.