The difference between cold and hot states of data backup and data archiving

The difference between cold and hot states of data backup and data archiving

The earliest data archiving applications were produced in the mainframe environment, which was due to the large scale and relatively mature IT applications in the mainframe environment at that time. Therefore, the difference between archiving and backup is relatively well understood by the larger domestic industries and enterprise users, but for enterprises with a short history of IT applications, small scale and limited data volume, the difference between the two may not be so clear.

Basic storage applications mainly include data backup and data archiving. The purpose of archiving is to achieve the systematic, scientific and long-term preservation of historical data and information for the purpose of company decision-making management, supervision by superiors or third-party agencies, etc. Backup is just the opposite. Its purpose is to use data immediately to ensure business continuity or to enable business interruption to be restored in the shortest time.

In recent years, some major corporate fraud cases have occurred in Western countries, which has made the government and the entire society put forward more stringent requirements for the preservation of corporate data, thus raising the status of data archiving to a level that is related to the survival of enterprises and social stability. In addition, early computers mainly processed text data, but now they have to process a large amount of multimedia data. The requirements for storage capacity and speed have undergone fundamental changes. Enterprises are investing more and more in the preservation and utilization of data, and archiving is an important means for enterprises to effectively manage application data and reduce costs.

Therefore, from the perspective of today's data archiving applications, the main problem is to solve the two aspects of compliance with regulations for enterprise data preservation and effective management of enterprise data assets.

Although data archiving and backup are both storage applications, there are great differences in technical implementation. In the early days of IT applications, disk arrays were not as developed as they are today, and tape libraries were the main backup technology. Today, hard disks are getting cheaper and cheaper, not only has the application of tapes in backup decreased, but some people even propose to use disk arrays for archiving and completely replace tape libraries. However, due to the technical characteristics of disk arrays, the data stored in them are in a hot state.

That is to say, the disk storage system used for data archiving should not be shut down, and its re-powering process is also complicated. In today's "green computing" advocacy, long-term power-on is not conducive to reducing energy consumption. Moreover, the frequency of use of data for decades or hundreds of years may not be very high, and the cost-effectiveness of disks and tapes is even greater. Therefore, for data archiving, tape libraries are still the irreplaceable best choice. Optical

disk storage is also considered a means of data archiving, which is characterized by low price, low technical content, and easy to distribute on a large scale. However, its capacity cannot be compared with tapes and disks, and the applications it can support are also relatively limited, so it is not suitable for data archiving applications at the enterprise data center level.

We all see that the concept of applying ILM (Information Lifecycle Management) in data archiving has been gradually accepted by users, which can not only help enterprises improve the management of their data assets as a whole, but also achieve effective management and efficient use of large amounts of data at the lowest cost. And with the maturity of applications and actual needs, we find that technologies such as data encryption, identity authentication, and virtualization are gradually entering the application of data archiving, and effectively improve the efficiency of data archiving applications, enhance data security, and greatly reduce the complexity and cost of operations.

The application of ILM enables us to better consider all aspects of operability, security, cost and production efficiency when considering existing data application needs, and build a data archiving protection infrastructure more rationally and systematically.