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FINDING THE CHAMPION SOLUTIONS

From STORAGE Magazine Vol 7, Issue 2 - March/April 2007

If you want to ensure you are one of the success stories when it comes to selecting the best archiving hardware, you have to know what will best meet your specific needs. What do these systems offer, by way of functionality? And what are the cost implications of implementing an effective policy? Editor Brian Wall has been finding out

How should you store those large volumes of data that reside right across your organisation, so they really meet all of your needs? The process can be a nightmare, unless you put the proper structures - and solutions - in place. And with data growing at an alarming rate for most businesses, failure to get it right can seriously affect their ability to perform.

Most of all, there is the increasing emphasis on data retention for regulatory compliance and auditing purposes, especially the plethora of government regulations now in force, which can be financially punitive where there is a failure to comply. Consequently, organisations are having to think very hard about the strategies they put in place to manage their archived information.

How, then, do you archive that information in the most efficient and least expensive manner, bearing in mind its hierarchical nature? John Greenwood, product sales director, NCE Computer Group (Europe), sees archiving very much as being divided into two categories - file archiving and email archiving. Typically, vendors that offer solutions in this market have products that are very good at one or the other, he says, but rarely are they designed to address both.

"So, as a customer looking to introduce an archiving framework into the business, it is sometimes best practice to stop and think what it is you are looking to address before you launch into the myriad of archiving solutions that are available. It's all well and good being able to push data into the electronic filing cabinet that is an archiving solution, but it's important that you consider how easy it is to actually find that data once it's in there. From a compliance perspective, it is paramount that an element of traceability is also included in these thoughts.

"Archiving software packages from the likes of Bridgehead, CA, EMC, Messaging Architects, Symantec, Waterford and Ziplip are capable of managing this process and, with the right hardware beneath them, can represent an excellent solution to the challenge."

As Greenwood points out, archiving is far from being a new concept, of course, with the three-letter acronym 'HSM' - Hierarchical Storage Management - a long familiar expression. "However," states Greenwood, "the storage spin doctors have been working overtime to produce new terminology for this sector, and taglines such as Data-at-Rest, Content Addressable Storage (CAS) and the over-used Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) have helped to reinvigorate the file archiving arena."

One vendor has focused on producing a family of appliances, offering a secure intelligent archive architecture. In the Assureon portfolio, Nexsan Technologies has developed a solution to address compliance through file archiving. Nexsan is perhaps best known for its success in the SATA storage array market, with products such as the SATAboy and SATAbeast, and this technology is integral to the Assureon product. The most recent additions to that family includes the NX, providing a searchable archive for up to 20 million documents in a 7U rack-mount architecture. NCE is working closely with Nexsan to offer this solution.

Accessibility-availability
The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) estimates around 68% of data within enterprise storage systems has not been accessed for 90 days plus. US analysts Enterprise Strategy Group believes the figure could be as high as 85%, once the fact that much of this data is kept multiple times is added to the equation.
"Important and valuable information must be available immediately, regardless of how long it has been left, and guaranteed to be untouched and in the same condition as when it was first deposited," says Brendan Kinkade, VP Marketing at Nexsan. "Archiving systems are expected to deliver all the security and integrity of the deposit box in electronic form.

"Selecting hardware for archiving depends largely on the same factors that any storage hardware purchase involves: current topology, capacity, what legacy systems are available, etcetera. But data handling characteristics are relevant as well and might influence the hardware strategy.

"Where records capture, and archiving a file as created, is the top priority, a disk-based content addressed storage system would serve optimally. Using a unique content address for each record, CAS simplifies online retrieval, as well as preserving authenticity. CAS systems can offer ongoing checks of data integrity and WORM functionality as well. And where regulations require unalterable and removable recording media, the records management standby of optical disk might make sense. The archive cannot be changed after it is stored, it cannot be rewritten and it cannot be erased. It is easy to preserve and establish authenticity with this technology."

Finally, there are archives that do not require a high degree of bullet-proofing. These archives are used more in corporate governance and management applications than more exacting litigation support or regulatory compliance. "Here, data management standbys such as storage area networks, network attached storage or even direct attach storage may suffice," he comments, "though trade-offs regarding manageability and the authenticity of the data should be expected. These options exist in almost every price range to fit every size budget."

From a legacy perspective, certain vertical markets have always associated archiving with magneto optical technology, and Plasmon continue to ride that wave. Their Archive Appliance, integrating the UDO (Ultra Density Optical) technology, will sit underneath some of the aforementioned archiving software packages and provide the hardware platform to meet archiving demands.

"Paranoia will drive this market," concludes Greenwood. "The likes of the medical, engineering, financial, voice-recording, legal and CCTV sectors appreciate that certain data is key to their business. Having a digital archive is a must for them. However, as the importance of data and volume of data increases, each and every business is considering introducing an archiving solution."

Certainly, there are enough imperatives to push more and more businesses down the archiving path. With the increasing emphasis on data retention for regulatory compliance, businesses of all sizes are looking to archive data in a secure, accessible and cost-effective way," says Paul Klinkby-Silver, VP Europe, EqualLogic. "Dedicated archiving solutions are one way of approaching this problem, but these solutions can be expensive and often suitable for only larger organisations with significant IT resources."

For medium-sized enterprises, he points out, a more economical approach to tackling this issue is to implement archiving as one of the layers of a multi-tier consolidated SAN. One of the benefits of this is that it allows you to manage all of your data in a single SAN, while placing data on the most appropriate type of storage for its use pattern. For example, frequently accessed data can reside on tier one, made up of high-performance SAS arrays, while less frequently accessed data can be moved to tier two, comprised of high-capacity SATA arrays.

"SANs with advanced virtualisation architectures allow users to move application data online between tiers. The archiving tier can be customised to ensure that data is readily available in a particular form to prove compliance with a specific regulatory requirement, such as HIPAA or Sarbanes-Oxley."

Since it is mainly regulatory compliance that is driving the market for archiving, performance tends to be less of an issue for businesses, he adds. "Archived data is unlikely to be constantly in demand, in the same way as critical production data, so most organisations will want a solution which gives them a degree of flexibility, in terms of the storage hardware they deploy. Implementing archiving within a multi-tier SAN allows data to be offloaded on to more cost-effective storage, which can deliver significant savings, compared with standalone archiving solutions."

Steve Tongish, director of marketing (EMEA) at Plasmon, believes the best approach is to begin by differentiating active data from static (archive) data, and then define the retention and authenticity requirements for the different categories of archive data. "This process helps to break down large volumes of unstructured data into smaller and better understood categories. Only after these categories begin to take shape can you start to make informed decisions about which hardware to allocate for each data category."

He recommends using higher performance Fibre RAID for the most active data and less expensive SATA RAID for lower priority active data. "Tape or disk-to-disk storage is a good fit for short-term backup of the active data. Non-volatile optical storage, such as UDO, is ideal for static long-term archive data. Be very suspicious of any vendor that suggests one storage technology can be used for everything. The technical, business and financial requirements for these different data categories can vary dramatically, and deploying a selection of hardware can make for a very efficient and resilient environment."

What about functionality and the cost implications? His take on that is: fibre RAID offers performance and high availability; SATA RAID offers capacity, lower cost and quick data availability; tape gives high capacity, fast capture, data recovery and short-term insurance; and optical delivers authenticity, longevity, data discovery and compliant retention.

According to Gary Preston, managing director, north and south EMEA, Tandberg, there are many criteria that should be considered when it comes to choosing truly effective archiving hardware, including speed, ease of use, legal compliance and the total cost of ownership. "With such a wide choice of technologies available, it makes perfect sense to choose the best from both worlds - disk-based and tape-based storage products - as fits your company's archiving needs. Disk will provide performance, with quick access to archived material and tape libraries, or an autoloader based on LTO-3 or LTO-4 will provide safe, long-term archiving and meet compliance requirements with the use of WORM media."

However, finding the right archiving software solution is perhaps more difficult than selecting the hardware, he adds, as it will need to hook into the other data management systems within an organisation. "For example, finding an email archiving system that can store, save and find files after years is a huge task for any piece of software. The archiving software also needs to work perfectly with the selected hardware. Organisations should always look for systems that are certified for the latest software versions - or at least make sure you can try out systems like these before investing heavily in them. An easy way to circumvent any problems and reduce the time taken to select technology is to have the right partner at your side. Make sure your reseller is an expert."

Organisations have traditionally approached archive and compliance as two separate and distinct problems, argues Mike Walters, consultant systems engineer, NetApp. This separation of efforts, he says, has created a situation in which most archive and compliance solutions today are deployed as point solutions for point problems, thus creating information silos. This, in turn, generates new challenges, especially when organisations need to migrate data and the system cannot act seamlessly with the rest of storage solutions.

"Vendors that require that organisations buy separate systems for primary and secondary storage force end users to make a choice: do they configure their secondary storage for archive or do they configure it for compliance? If an organisation requires both, they will need to buy multiple systems. A single, unified platform that satisfies operational demands for archive while providing the capabilities that ensures management of e-mail, file, enterprise applications and ECM, will help organisations maximise the impact of the IT investment they make."

What sets NetApp apart from other vendors, he claims, is that all systems in NetApp FAS series can be used for any combination of primary and secondary storage. "This means that secondary storage can have the performance characteristics of primary storage, and organisations can manage it all with the same software, processes and skill sets. Archiving solutions should be scalable, reliable, and provide visibility and detailed reporting on storage utilisation and an organisation's data content. This enables IT managers to define what data should be moved to secondary storage, ensuring effective storage utilisation and automated specific data retention policies."

Steve Mackey, director of product marketing, Quantum, stresses the cost benefits of tape over disk. "The initial cost per gigabyte of tape is very low, compared to disk. In addition, tape offers long-term cost savings by not requiring power for cooling purposes. Tape, therefore, is also by far the more environmentally friendly of the two options - another cost consideration."

De-duplication has gone some way to shifting this relationship between disk and tape. By compressing data by up to 40%, it has effectively increased the capacity of disk, making it a more viable, cheaper and environmentally friendly option than before. "Nevertheless, in terms of cost, disk still cannot equal tape," Mackey insists. "In terms of longevity of storage, data on disks has to be migrated every three to five years, as the hardware itself wears out. Tape as a media can last up to thirty years, but the data on the tape can begin to decay well before this time. While tape would seem to be the better option in this respect, data sitting on an unused tape could be decaying without anyone knowing about it, presenting a greater potential for data loss.”

Adding a software layer to automate data migration can solve this problem, he says. "Archiving software such as Quantum's StorNext detects decaying data on a tape and migrates it automatically, as and when necessary. The same software can be used to migrate data automatically, according to policies. Underused data on disk can automatically be migrated to tape, previously a very time-consuming task. This means valuable disk space can be used for more frequently accessed data.
"The best approach to long-term storage is to use a layered approach, incorporating both storage mediums, de-duplication and archiving software," adds Mackey. "In this way, the advantages of the two media can be exploited, while disadvantages can be counteracted or limited, to some extent, by software. The one approach to avoid at all costs is using point solutions. Archiving requires planning to remain efficient and not become an endless cost. Point solutions quickly reach capacity, meaning the only solution is to buy another point solution." ST