Organizations today face massive growth of their unstructured data. This growth results in e-mail, file, and SharePoint servers that require more and more storage and processing power.
This data growth can affect your organization in many ways, and poses many questions, including:
- Can you scale e-mail systems to meet additional storage demands?
- Are you storing multiple copies of the same message or file?
- Can you meet your backup and restore service-level agreement (SLA) windows?
- What about end-user productivity? Are users wasting time managing mailbox and PST/NSF files?
In addition to these operational issues, there are numerous regulations, audit requests, and legal matters that require organizations to not only maintain data, but also to discover and produce it upon request. Is your organization able to find specific messages and files in a timely matter when requested by HR, legal, subpoena, or audit?
A properly designed and implemented archiving solution can assist with all of these problems. First, archiving will allow you to physically move data, based on policies, from the primary server that has expensive tier 1 storage to an archiving platform that utilizes less expensive tier 2 storage. This can result in a significant reduction of tier 1 storage requirements on your primary servers − typically 60-percent or more based on the aggressiveness of the archiving policies implemented. PST & NSF files can also be migrated into the archiving platform, further reducing your tier 1 storage requirements.
Because data is moved off of tier 1 storage:
- The load on primary servers and tier 1 storage requirements are reduced.
- You are backing up less data, so you can meet your backup and restore SLA windows.
- Users no longer have to deal with quotes and creating PST/NSF files.
Also important is the end-user experience. Items moved to the archive are still accessible to the user, without the need for additional tools. Archived mail is accessed via Outlook or Outlook Web Access, and archived files are accessed via their creating application. All of the data archived, regardless of data type, is now discoverable via the archiving solution. This provides you with additional cost savings in compliance, audit, and discovery events. You have the ability to enforce information retention policies created by your legal teams. You no longer need to participate in reactive discovery “fire-drills.” And you will realize reduction of discovery costs, time, and potential penalties and sanctions.
For more information, please visit us at www.datalink.com.