What is archiving?
Archiving is the task of moving inactive data from more expensive primary storage to less expensive secondary storage where it can be retained according to corporate policy and compliance requirements. Archived data is typically information that must be retained for historical purposes, future reference or for compliance with regulations.
What are the benefits of archiving?
Superior archiving solutions allow organizations to:
- Ensure compliance with regulatory environments.
- Improve the performance of email systems by reducing the size of PST files.
- Improve application performance by moving inactive data to long-term retention.
- Reduce storage costs by moving seldom-used data to high-capacity, low-performance storage media that is less costly than primary storage.
What’s the difference between archiving and backup?
Data backup provides protection by copying certain data to another location, on-site or off-site, where it can be accessed in the event that primary data is corrupted, lost, compromised or stolen. Data archiving is more concerned with retaining certain data for specific periods of time to provide important information, historical context or compliance with regulatory frameworks.