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You can’t protect what you can’t see or identify, yet too many organizations are struggling to do precisely that with their high-value data. Unstructured data (such as Word, PowerPoint, Excel or PDF files) accounts for nearly 70 percent of the data that organizations retain in their storage systems. Unfortunately, it is also intermixed throughout those storage systems with structured data (databases, spreadsheets, etc.), resulting in a complex morass of data that is expensive to protect and nearly impossible to manage.Storage optimization—the process of moving data to the most efficient and cost-effective storage system for that data—is the key to tackling this problem, and this series of quick steps will help organizations streamline that migration.
Step 1: Identify High-Value Data
You can’t protect what you can’t see or identify, yet too many organizations are struggling to do precisely that with their high-value data. Unstructured data (such as Word, PowerPoint, Excel or PDF files) accounts for nearly 70 percent of the data that organizations retain in their storage systems. Unfortunately, it is also intermixed throughout those storage systems with structured data (databases, spreadsheets, etc.), resulting in a complex morass of data that is expensive to protect and nearly impossible to manage.
Storage optimization—the process of moving data to the most efficient and cost-effective storage system for that data—is the key to tackling this problem, and this series of quick steps will help organizations streamline that migration.
Step 2: Understand Data Growth and Trends
Organizations must periodically run analysis reports to reveal data trends that can impact the answers to these fundamental questions:
In addition to enabling identification of high-value data, Secure Data Discovery analysis reports also help organizations see the sheer quantity of such data they are currently storing—and how quickly it is growing. Armed with this information, organizations are far better equipped to understand what data (and how much of it) can be migrated from their costly primary storage onto a secure archive storage platform.
Step 3: Employ Active Archiving
Data must be able to be easily and transparently migrated onto a cost-effective archive storage system without any disruption to ongoing operations. Nexsan Assureon™ Secure Archive solutions not only free up space on primary storage for use by more frequently-accessed data, they also automatically protect data from the moment it is migrated onto the active archive system.
Assureon-protected data does not need to be repeatedly backed up during weekly full or daily incremental backups, dramatically reducing the size, time and cost of the backup process. Assureon combines superior data protection with instant, active access to archived files by placing shortcuts to them on primary storage. And Assureon transparently migrates data off of expensive primary storage with no need for custom APIs or changes to existing applications.
Step 4: Unlock Full ROI Potential
The value proposition of storage optimization is clear; reduce storage costs by moving less-frequently accessed data from expensive primary storage onto more cost-effective secondary/archive storage. Assureon takes the benefits of storage optimization to a significantly higher level; it not only frees up primary storage and ensures high-value data is protected, it also delivers significant IT savings by eliminating the need for data to undergo onsite and offsite (DR) backups, encryption, deduplication, snapshots, etc.
The net result is that Assureon’s unique architecture and technology combine to deliver superior data protection while enabling dramatic improvements in storage efficiency and ROI.
