Contributing Editorial: How To Optimize Data Preservation

By Randy Kerns, Chief Technology Officer, ProStor Systems

The most basic function since computing began has been to preserve information. That requirement will continue and will become even more complicated with business rules and compliance demands as well as the sheer increase in the amount of data that must be preserved.

While data preservation is a fundamental practice, the purpose of the preservation can be divided into two primary categories: short-term data protection and long-term data preservation. The short-term data protection is primarily about disaster recovery or protection from some inappropriate action of some type. Long-term data preservation has a time element; the data must be preserved according to business rules or requirements for a long period of time and must be available when required.