Technology TIERED STORAGE
storage media, failure is a simple fact of life. An organisation can face tape drive failure, corrupt or inaccessible tapes, or simply the information written to tape in not “readable.” Human Error: One of the leading causes of data loss, human error can include simple errors such as accidentally re- initialising a tape or forgetting to enable the append option before starting a backup.
Disaster: Fire, water damage, mud, extraordinary cold, heat or other natural catastrophes are often the reason tapes become contaminated, damaged and no longer legible using standard means.
Forensically Unsound Methods: Finally, while the data may be “readable” by a human, moving it incorrectly can modify the file or system metadata relied upon for compliance, investigative and e-discovery purposes.
Developing a system to effectively protect your information and avoid the data accessibility gamble does not need to be a time consuming, technically difficult or costly exercise. Technology can easily streamline the entire process, and expert consultative assistance is available for organisations that need help making sense of the information life cycle.
Using its data management expertise accrued over the last 25 years, Kroll Ontrack can help companies streamline their current processes and the entire data restoration process – sometimes this could involve tens of thousands of data files – and avoid putting the accessibility of their data at risk. In addition, Kroll Ontrack’s data recovery service, Ontrack Data Recovery, can help recover data in the event of a data loss incident, when immediate expert help is required.
The following four simple steps will help companies to manage the accessibility of their stored data more efficiently, reduce the load on IT personnel and infrastructure, and ultimately reduce storage costs and prepare for any demands made on their company’s data:
Define The Requirements: Defining the project scope and identifying the required technical and personnel resources is a step that cannot be skipped or completed half-heartedly. Recording the type of media and its condition is just as important as clarifying the suitable target medium. Even with apparently devastating damage, there is usually some sort of recovery possible offering the opportunity to arrange the company’s long-term backups better at the same time. Analyse The Data: An organisation must identify the contents of the media in order to make informed decisions later about data retention, destruction, or suitability for compliance or litigation readiness. Depending on the business needs, scanning, cataloging, or indexing the media can help an organisation narrow their focus to the relevant media.
Manage and Refine The Data: Organisations regularly complete incremental (daily/weekly) and full (month-end/year-end)
backups. Although this is an industry “best practice,” the result creates multiple copies of the same data. Based on the previous analysis and knowledge of an organisation’s backup procedures, the relevant data set can be culled further, and assuming there is no active legal hold on the data, the duplicate data can be deleted. If the data must be retained, backups can be consolidated by restoring them to higher capacity tapes.
Perfect Data Delivery: When defining a project’s scope, data conversion and/or manipulation requirements may have been identified. It is important to understand the degree of complexity involved in order to keep the project on schedule and within budget. Some conversions are straightforward such as copying files from one computer system platform so they are readable by another platform, but other conversions may require more technical expertise. A more complex conversion may involve the manipulation of fields in a database.
Projects involving the management and manipulation of stored data can be triggered by a variety of regulatory, compliance or e-disclosure needs. Planning for data accessibility streamlines the effort required to meet those needs and mitigates the associated risks. Organisations that define their information management strategies and employ the tips outlined above will see these results.
Simply put, an information management strategy generated with a well-defined project plan, comprehensive documentation of data contents, improved usage of IT resources and timely delivery of data will greatly benefit your organisation, regardless of your storage solutions.
“Developing a system to effectively protect your information and avoid the data accessibility gamble does
not need to be a time consuming, technically difficult or costly exercise. Technology can easily streamline the entire process, and expert consultative assistance is available for organisations that need help making sense of the information life cycle
”
WWW.SNSEUROPE.COM FEBRUARY | 2011 37
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