Enterprise Systems Journal: Data Archiving vs. Data Backup: A Closer Look

Enterprise Systems Journal: Data Archiving vs. Data Backup: A Closer Look
Savvy organizations are embracing data archiving as a means to reduce costs, improve performance, and satisfy compliance requirements
By Stephen Swoyer, November 1, 2005
http://www.esj.com/enterprise/article.aspx?EditorialsID=1544

To a storage manager, the verbs “backup” and “archive” mean very different things. To most of the rest of us, they’re frequently used to describe the same action—namely, the process of moving data from an online storage tier to near-line or off-line storage. But backing data up and archiving data are distinct technology practices that have very different requirements.

They also have very different advantages. To the extent that organizations are able to embrace data archiving as a means to reduce costs, improve performance, and—of course—satisfy regulatory compliance requirements, it’s a potentially important distinction.

“In general, our customer base does not implement archiving on as wide a scale as they could,” says Kami Snyder, market manager for information lifecycle management (ILM) solutions with IBM Corp. “There is a difference between backup and archiving and customers don’t necessarily call out the difference in their own mind.”
...