Impetus for Consolidated Archived Data Stores Now Transcends Cost and Compliance Concerns

The data archiving landscape is undergoing a transformation and no where are these changes more evident than in how companies archive data found on their corporate file servers or in their Microsoft Exchange or Microsoft SharePoint data stores. While the impetus for archiving this data in the past was driven by either operational (save storage space or performance improvements) or compliance concerns (satisfy legal concerns), today's companies must take both objectives into account when selecting an archiving solution. But to do so companies need software that can access these application data stores, move the appropriate data and archive it on various kinds of media (disk, optical or tape) and then later search, manage and retrieve this data when it is needed from this media.

Accessing and then archiving data from production application data stores is easier said than done. Of the aforementioned application servers (file servers, Exchange and SharePoint), they each require different techniques to archive data found in their respective data stores. For instance, file servers offer features and functionality that vary according to their underlying file systems and it is not unusual for companies to use file servers from different vendors. Since file systems on the file servers differ according to vendor (Linux, Windows, or UNIX) the archiving software must take each file systems' specific features into account when archiving data from these systems.

Microsoft Exchange and SharePoint present a different set of problems. When archiving data from Exchange, the archiving software often needs to make a copy of the message or file as soon as it enters Exchange to satisfy corporate compliance requirements. Later, after a specified period of time has passed, the archiving software then needs to clean up the application production data store and move aging data (30 - 90 days or older) to the appropriate media that satisfies corporate cost and compliance concerns. In the case of SharePoint, there is no effective way to journal the messages as they enter SharePoint so the archiving software must regularly run incremental jobs throughout the day.

So what's the point of this blog entry (other than to show archiving data is not trivial)? Primarily it is to point out that even though both compliance and cost concerns are motivating companies to archive the data found in their rapidly growing file server, Exchange and SharePoint data stores, the complexities associated with managing the archives from any one of these data stores are significant.

But the new reality that more enterprise companies are coming to see is that they need to archive data for not just one of these application types but all three. If companies find themselves in this situation, they should also recognize that they need to identify and select archiving software that supports each of these application types without making the management of the archived data stores untenable. Using different archiving software products can, and likely will, result in disparate management interfaces, archiving policies and data stores. These then create their own levels of complexity both in terms of managing data archives on a day-to-day basis as well as later on when it comes time to search and retrieve the archived data or restrict and/or preserve the data as part of an eDiscovery or legal hold.

In this respect, the CommVault® Simpana® software suite has set itself apart from competitors. Not only can companies archive data residing on corporate file servers or in Microsoft Exchange and SharePoint data stores using the different options available within its Simpana software, it can store and manage data from all of these various sources in one location. The benefits that companies derive from using CommVault to archive all of this data include:

• Training their personnel on one interface
• Setting policies though one console that apply to all of these data stores
• Managing all archived data in the same way regardless of what the source of the data is
• Searching retrieve archived data through a common product

Every enterprise company is coming face-to-face with the need to archive their data in their fast growing data stores: file servers, Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft SharePoint. But as they do so, they are also beginning to encounter not only the complexities associated with archiving data for each of these data stores but the longer term challenges associated with managing the archives after they are created. In this respect, CommVault Simpana is unique in that companies can use it to access and archive data from any of these aforementioned application data stores, store the data in one repository and then manage and search these archived stores through one common interface.