For those of you that produce and manage data every day, you know very well that enterprise data is continuing to grow exponentially for all types organizations. However, the more data-intensive organizations, such as media and entertainment, healthcare, geo-spatial and others, are not only dealing with a larger number of files but significantly larger size files, as well.
Managing and storing this data is a constant and costly challenge. Legacy data center infrastructures are continuously feeling the pressure of data bloat, causing constant maintenance, expensive upgrades, and continued investment of time and money.
Keeping your active data on all-flash storage arrays, NAS, or file servers makes sense, but over time proves impractical and cost-prohibitive for less frequently used (or inactive) files.
…and in many cases, this can be as high as 90%!
In addition to the raw cost of storage, most backup data – from 80% to 90% – is not changing, and probably will never change again, yet it is continually managed and potentially backed up repeatedly. This data is generally just consuming storage space and slowing up primary storage, and backup processes in particular. In addition, data protection to meet compliance or business requirements, as well as protection from ransomware threats, of this primary data must be considered as even backups are not always protected.
This adds up to a huge waste of money and resources, a worrying scenario, especially for those wrestling with limited IT budgets and shrinking staff levels.
Offloading these huge volumes of data to an Active Archive allows files to be stored and protected for the medium to long term in accordance with company requirements and/or compliance mandates, using a more cost-effective storage environment. This makes excellent economic sense, doesn’t it?
For years now, organizations have been looking to the cloud or tape as key options to offload these valuable but less frequently accessed files from primary storage. However, as you evaluate the different options for large volume archiving requirements, you should consider what technology(ies) best meet your business and budget needs. For example, tape is better suited for cold archives due to its slow access times and sequential nature. Offsite public cloud storage is also a good alternative for Active Archive, but suffers from longer access latencies and typically comes with many hidden costs, such as egress fees that compound annually. Concerns over data sovereignty and security must also be factored into this decision.
Significantly Reduce Current and Future Storage Costs with a DataCore Swarm Active Archive
On the other hand, DataCore Swarm software-defined object storage enables you to store your valuable data in an Active Archive safely and economically on-site without the worry of hidden cloud costs, with on-demand access, when needed. If needed, this S3-compatible object storage system can also be integrated with tape and cloud storage to form a hybrid environment.
Many of today’s applications now include S3 compatibility, adding in-built options for lower cost, longer term storage. In addition, data movers (such as DataCore FileFly) are available to easily offload older, less active files. Migrated files remain accessible from the same folders as before, but their contents are tucked away in lower-cost object storage.
With Swarm, you can reduce your storage management overhead and significantly lower the total cost of ownership (TCO) of storage. At the same time, ensure that your data is always protected and immediately accessible – even after a month, a year, or ten years later. Swarm’s health processor continuously monitors the system for hardware failures, bit rot, replication and erasure coding anomalies, and network issues, and self-heals. In addition, Swarm uses a patented parallel architecture to automate management and increase resiliency and responsiveness as cluster sizes grow. This also speeds up read, write, and repair operations as your data capacity increases.
Protect Active Archive from Ransomware and Meet Regulatory Mandates
Swarm delivers robust data protection capabilities to safeguard your Active Archive from ransomware and other security threats and data loss due to disasters and hardware failures. Archive and preserve large volumes of data for as long as needed and comply with regulatory or business mandates.
With this massively scalable, cost-effective storage platform, you don’t need to worry about unexpected cloud costs, potential data breaches or tampering: your data is safely stored within your network perimeter in accordance with your security policies. Learn more about the benefits of object storage for data protection from the Evaluator Group Technical Insight Report.
Secure and Cost-effective Solution for Long-term Data Retention
With DataCore Swarm object storage, you gain a cost-effective, and readily accessible Active Archive to complement your all-flash storage arrays, NAS infrastructure, and file servers. You can ensure long-term, secure, durable data retention on-premises, which is still accessible by the applications, devices, and users that created the data.
Contact DataCore today and get one of our Solution Architects to provide you a personalized demo of our Swarm object storage Active Archive solution.
