Archiving vs. Backup: Correcting the Confusion

Source: IT Business Edge with Ed Jones, a director at ThinkingSAFE Limited

Question: A recent BridgeHead Software study shows that many companies — particularly in the U.S. — don't understand the difference between data archiving and data backup. Can you briefly explain what the difference is?
Jones: In our view, the main differences between backup and archive are that backups are used for operational recovery of business systems and need to be kept for a number of weeks, [while] archives are created to comply with legislation and good corporate governance practices and need to be kept for a number of years.

Question: What has caused the confusion?
Jones: The confusion in the market has arisen for a number of reasons. There is often a disconnect between IT, who looks after the operational aspects of the data, and the business, who is responsible for informing IT of archiving requirements. IT's view has been that they can provide a month-end archive point for all the data for the cost of a set of backup tapes. However, businesses are only just waking up to the corporate governance implications of this long-term archiving strategy. Until the board of a company is educated about the archiving processes that they need to implement in order to protect their stakeholders' interests, the IT group can't deliver it.

The disconnect tends to be compounded as the medium used to store a backup has generally been magnetic tape. A daily backup cycle protects all types of business data, structured and unstructured. To create an archive, manual processes are put in place to take a backup tape from its normal backup cycle and store it in a fire safe long term. This creates a snapshot of the business at that point in time. Yes, it's a cheap methodology but it doesn't deliver the security, granularity or availability that the business needs. The implications are that:

- Manual processes are never good and automation should be implemented to manage the archive processes.
- You cannot guarantee that a month-end backup tape will show you the e-mail conversation between two execs and a customer that occurred in the middle of last month.
- A backup tape created three years ago will be in a format that is not supported by the current tape drive hardware/software, and if you have to go back to a tape archive supporting multiple sites/servers, it will cost hundreds of hours to find all the information you may need.

Question: How can the confusion — and the noncompliance penalties that could result — be avoided?
Jones: We can prevent recurrence of this situation by accepting that the business requirements for operational backup and long-term data archive are different and disparate. Disk-based backup and archive technologies are now enabling both requirements to be addressed within an integrated platform but the problem isn't technology. We still need to educate the business managers on their responsibilities, which will help structure the requirement. The key steps then are in funding the solution properly and fully automating all the management processes.