| If you're happy with your organization's current | | | | network bandwidth or storage capacity." |
| electronic data management policy that involves | | | | Fortunately, many archiving products include |
| storing terabytes or petabytes of data, causing | | | | compression as one of their storage reduction |
| your servers to perform at impressive snail-like | | | | features, reducing data by anywhere from 50% |
| speeds and waste time and power, more power | | | | to 80%. Data compression can be used for all |
| to you-literally. For everyone else, consider how | | | | tiers of storage. When combined with |
| archiving your electronic data helps not only your | | | | deduplication technology, the data storage sizes |
| company, but the whole world, by reducing your | | | | can be reduced to a quarter of their original size. |
| company's data footprints. | | | | Deduplication/Single Instance Storage |
| Like many green technologies, archiving is an | | | | Single instance storage technology locates multiple |
| eco-friendly technology that also saves plenty of | | | | instances of the same file and stores only one |
| the other kind of green. The goal of storage | | | | copy, thereby deduplicating archive reserves. |
| management archiving software is more efficient | | | | Imagine how many times one email is sent to |
| use of existing corporate resources, which leads | | | | multiple employees or how many times the same |
| to a reduction in a company's data footprints. The | | | | attachment can be forwarded around. Without |
| effects of reducing your data footprints include | | | | deduplication, every copy of an email or |
| increasing productivity, lowering power usage and | | | | attachment sent to multiple employees or sent |
| cooling requirements, and utilizing fewer resources, | | | | multiple times (or both!) would be stored to the |
| both human and financial. | | | | archive, which wastes space in the archive and |
| Sponsored by information technology analysts and | | | | wastes time during e-discovery searches. |
| consultants, lists "...archiving, on-line compression | | | | When reviewing archiving products, be sure to |
| & single instance storage (de-duplication)" | | | | ask if the product supports single instance storage |
| archiving as primary methods for data footprint | | | | of attachments as well as emails. Why is this a |
| reduction. These methods help businesses reduce | | | | critical point? Most businesses follow the "80/20 |
| their power consumption and IT resources | | | | rule": 80% of storage space is used by large |
| without sacrificing functionality. In fact, every | | | | attachments, which comprise only 20% of total |
| green technology mentioned below actually | | | | electronic communications. Most archiving products |
| increases functionality and reduces the cost of | | | | deduplicate emails, but fewer also deduplicate |
| information lifecycle management. | | | | attachments. Neglecting attachments during the |
| Archiving | | | | dedupe process significantly reduces total storage |
| Archiving is the act of collecting and storing data | | | | volume reduction. |
| for future use. Archiving allows companies to | | | | Tiered Storage/Hierarchical Storage Management |
| retain as much data as they need by capturing | | | | According to GreenDataStorage.com, tiered |
| and offloading data from email and file servers to | | | | storage or hierarchical storage management |
| a storage device. Archiving data off the email and | | | | involves "aligning applicable storage and media to |
| file servers removes a large workload from the | | | | data and application requirements". In other words, |
| servers, allowing them to function more efficiently | | | | tiered storage or hierarchical storage management |
| and use less energy to perform tasks. Archiving | | | | is the process of placing less frequently used data |
| tends to place a very low burden on CPU | | | | on less performance-intensive storage devices, |
| resources. | | | | resulting in a 'tiered' or 'hierarchical' storage |
| Additionally, archiving centrally organizes data, | | | | scheme. |
| which improves the efficiency of backup | | | | Hierarchical storage management reduces overall |
| processes, as well as disaster recovery and | | | | energy usage by storing data more efficiently. |
| e-discovery efforts. Locating and restoring data | | | | Another added benefit of tiered storage is cost |
| from an archive database is much faster than ad | | | | reduction-but even if we could all afford to store |
| hoc efforts to locate data on multiple storage | | | | everything on more expensive and |
| devices and even individual employees' computers. | | | | power-intensive devices, that doesn't mean we |
| Archiving saves power usage and IT energy. | | | | should. |
| Another great way to utilize storage resources | | | | So if your IT department is ready to go green, |
| more efficiently is by compressing data. | | | | consider a process like archiving that also |
| Data Compression | | | | improves internal efficiency and reduces |
| According to GreenDataStorage.com, data | | | | operational costs, which makes CFO's (and the |
| compression's ultimate goal is "to reduce the size | | | | Earth) very happy. |
| of data to create a corresponding reduction in | | | | |