Four major issues to consider in database archiving

It storage professionals will be under increasing pressure-as structured data grows, the need to archive such data becomes increasingly urgent, especially for database data.

The archiving market is less concerned than the unstructured data such as e-mail, even though many vendors are working on it in this area. HP, for example, has recently been listed as the top 10 in the field by promoting Outerbay to build its database archiving market. Solix Other firms that occupy a part of the market include Applimation and Princeton Softech.

As the database archiving market heats up, it is important for IT managers and analysts to see both the advantages of the technology and its flaws.

Understanding Archive Products

At least one analyst has told us that most users don't know much about these products. "Unlike unstructured data, you can do a lot of things for structured data," says Brian Babineau, senior analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group. "In particular, you can use structured data to support subsets of data and run tests on them when the primary database is running in production mode," he said.

Babineau said: "Most people do not know that data archiving technology has these features and functions." "and add that manufacturers like Solix and Hewlett-Packard offer these features."

Other useful features include "mixed (scramble)" sensitive data. "[Most it] users are not aware of these features because they are only responsible for database management or storage management and not for security management," Babineau said. ”

Consideration of Virtualization

District Shlomi, director of network Systems at Texas's Austin Independent School Harif, says they are looking for the best way to develop archiving technology. He said the region needed a flexible solution because of the large number of student data and institutional data needed to be preserved in different academic years.

Another problem that needs to be addressed today is to find a technology that can support mobile database data and support processing applications. "You need to save not only the data, but also the application at which it resides," the official said. ”

Just at this point, VMware appears, and it seems to be the most advantageous candidate. "From the OS to [database software], it takes into account every event," Harif said. "All you have to do is make sure that you have a similar category of hardware [for archiving], which is not an easy task." ”

A noteworthy problem is the lifecycle of the software. "I believe that VMware-type products require about three years of backward compatibility," Harif said. "This schedule is more or less consistent with its IT strategy. "We want every server we buy to be able to spend at least four years." ”

Deploy now, look to the future

Building your database archiving strategy based on your current needs is simply asking for trouble. For example, IDC has warned in a recent report that many companies are building their database files through their own custom tools, and the consequence is that they may not be accessible in a few years.

Andrew Gibbons, SmugMug's operating director, agrees with the idea that there may be a problem with custom tools. "At the moment our favorite work is handmade," he said. "His company has installed software that performs copies and archives of database data every week."

Andrew Gibbons also explained that an automated database archiving product would make his job easier: "Migrating 200GB or so data is not a trivial matter." ”

Another problem here is that backbone employees may leave the company and take away a lot of key technologies. David Hill, head of Mesabi Group, said: "If you forget what you've done, you'll be in trouble when the new man takes over." ”

The solution is to make sure you have the key skills to handle both the original database application and any new SQL queries that need to be run. "Users must plan carefully for what they are going to do in the future," Hill said. ”

Considering the impact of ILM

The advent of technologies such as Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) can enable IT managers to automatically migrate their data to cheaper storage devices, which is also a concern for the database archive.

IDC warns that many database users have almost no use of archiving technology. Currently, most users simply and indefinitely store unused data in their databases. This phenomenon is quite problematic because it wastes storage space and, in the long run, wastes a lot of money.

Of course, ILM also poses a lot of problems for users. In recent data protection discussions, for example, IT managers have cautioned that even big-name ILM vendors, such as EMC and Hewlett-Packard, have no authoritative technology to address all data management issues.