Learn More About Archive Storage Solutions
Archive storage solutions act as storage systems for inactive data that businesses must retain but may only access occasionally. Data archiving or data tiering helps companies store and secure older information for regulatory compliance, information governance, business intelligence, lawsuit management, or future references.
Archive file storage solutions, also known as information archiving solutions, are ideal for structured and unstructured data, such as financial reports, emails, web content, log data, historical data, retired application data, database records, and spreadsheets.
Primary storage demands high input/output operations per second (IOPS) levels for read/write activities. Archive storage systems, however, rely on low-performance, high-capacity storage mediums. These low-cost storage tiers reduce primary storage consumption costs, which is otherwise higher during long-term data retention. The result is cost-effective information storage with efficient data retrieval and transfer.
Some archive systems use write once, read many (WORM) functionality to offer read-only functionality and prevent data modification, while others also provide writing functionality.
What are the common features of archive storage solutions?
The following are some core features of archive storage solutions that users find helpful:
Searchability: Search capability is a must-have feature for data archiving software that lets users search data by type (email, pdf, spreadsheet, etc.), author, source (server, device, application, etc.), creation date, and data structure (social security numbers, bank routing numbers, etc). Archiving solutions also add metadata to each data file to help users find inactive data.
Data deduplication: Archive software also reduce storage overhead by removing redundant data copies from disk, flash, or tape storage. The result is reduced storage capacity requirements, which translate into storage cost savings. Archiving solutions with data deduplication capabilities enable users to keep a baseline copy of changed and unchanged data and experience less redundancy.
Data lifecycle management: Many companies create archiving strategies that let them automatically move less frequently accessed data from primary storage to archive storage. This automation capability saves companies time that would otherwise be spent on creating, changing, and auditing archives throughout the data lifecycle.
Access control: Organizations with large teams often need different permission levels to allow and restrict certain users from accessing archive data. Most archiving systems feature pre-set user roles to help these companies create role-specific access permissions. These solutions feature access logs for ease of user activity monitoring as well.
Flexibility: Archiving platforms also must allow businesses to write and retrieve different types of data, such as application logs, customer service requests, and social media posts, using multiple data platforms.
What types of archive storage solutions exist?
Archive data storage solutions use different mediums, including tapes, hard drives, cloud, disks, and flash storage. Traditionally, archival systems have been file-based but now use object storage.
On-premises archive storage
Companies deploy these solutions in their data centers to have complete control over data, hardware, and software. On-premises archive storage tools use a mix of object storage solutions, tape storage, and disk storage to archive large volumes of data in a scalable and cost-effective manner.
Financial service providers, government agencies, and healthcare companies use this type of storage to retain sensitive data while meeting audit-related compliance requirements.
Cloud archive storage
Cloud archive storage platforms enable large enterprises with global offices to archive and access data securely from different sources and locations. They eliminate the need for buying, or maintaining IT systems for storage, thus reducing long-term storage costs. These solutions also feature built-in encryption and application integration capabilities.
Medical institutes, media companies, educational institutions, and government agencies use cloud solutions to archive patient records, video footage, student documents, and public records. However, businesses may need specialized software for data transfer and must be careful about vendor lock-in.
Archive storage can be divided into the following media types depending on the physical device used for storage.
Other archiving storage solutions
Below are other archiving solutions that companies use in a limited capacity but were quite popular.
Optical media storage
Optical disks like DVDs and CDs use the WORM technology to store data in a physically immutable manner. They rely on laser beams to write and read the data to and from spinning disks. Besides having a longer shelf life, this media is also portable because of its compact size.
Organizations using optical media often struggle with low storage capacity and slower read/write speeds.
Tape archive storage
Tape storage systems use magnetic tapes to record and store data. Businesses use them because of their low cost, reliability, and ability to protect data from malware by working offline. Tapes also make error detection and correction easier with read-after-write verification functionality.
The main challenge is that tapes use sequential access, slowing data searching and retrieval. Plus, tapes deteriorate with use and due to environmental conditions.
Disk drive
Disk drives are electro-mechanical devices that use magnetism for data storage and retrieval. They feature data deduplication and remote replication capabilities. Users can also integrate them with indexing engines to search archived items faster.
Despite offering an excellent storage-to-cost ratio, disk drives can be expensive to upgrade and maintain. Moreover, they experience a high failure rate without cooling and air filtering.
Removable disk
Removable disk storage features random access capabilities that ensure faster media reading and writing. Small and medium-sized companies primarily use removable disks like external hard drives, universal serial bus (USB) drives, and flash drives because of their portability and ease of usage. However, removable disks offer a poor cost-to-storage ratio and don't suit enterprises with large volumes of data.
What are the benefits of archive storage solutions?
The benefits of using an archiving solution include:
Reduced storage cost: Organizations with a rapidly growing amount of data spend a fortune on data storage. The cost is even higher as they store primary data in native formats. An effective archiving solution helps them compress and store primary data as cold data, allowing maximum cost savings.
For example, a 2:1 compression ratio reduces hot data storage costs by 50%. Companies can also unlock additional savings by opting for cloud-based solutions.
Meeting regulatory compliance: Some companies may have to store data in archives for extended periods, depending on regulatory requirements. For example, the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) requires employers to retain payroll records, sales/purchase documents, and collective bargaining agreements for up to three years. Another example is the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which requires fee-for-service healthcare providers to retain medical records for up to six years from the creation date.
Data archiving platforms ease data retention and protection with built-in policies. This ease of meeting long-term archival mandates helps organizations prevent premature data destruction.
Prevention of data loss: Data archiving moves in-circulation data to archives, limiting users' ability to modify it. Moreover, archive storage solutions feature robust security measures to protect sensitive information from malware infection, cyberattacks, unauthorized access, and breaches.
Easy audit tracking: Data archiving solutions also feature audit trail tracking, offering organizations complete visibility over who is accessing and modifying what and when.
High durability: Archive storage systems ensure data integrity during long-term preservation with redundancy and data replication features that protect companies from data loss.
Business agility: Archiving solutions make it easier for businesses to retrieve, extract, and push data to production while deploying new business models.
Who uses archive storage solutions?
Archive storage solutions are used by the following professionals:
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IT administrators: IT admins are responsible for maintaining networks, security systems, and data storage infrastructure. They use data archiving solutions to optimize the process of storing infrequently accessed data throughout its lifecycle. Besides reducing storage costs, these platforms also enable them to provision data and ensure data accessibility at all times.
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Compliance managers: Archiving platforms enable compliance professionals to adhere to national and international laws, industry-specific regulations, and data retention requirements. The result is efficient data management and timely response to legal requests.
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Data analysts: Data professionals use archiving solutions in tandem with statistical analysis software to analyze inactive data and discover business insights or historical trends.
Apart from these roles, the following teams use storage archiving systems for different purposes.
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IT teams responsible for managing organizational data infrastructure rely on archiving solutions for securely storing inactive data and ensuring it's accessible.
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Compliance and legal teams ensure that their organizations adhere to industry-specific legal regulations. Archive storage helps them meet these data preservation requirements for compliance audits, legal investigations, and data retention.
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Finance teams are tasked with improving efficiency by analyzing financial records. They use archiving solutions to maintain audit trails and inspect historical financial data. Accounting teams manage historical financial statements and analyze trends using archiving solutions.
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Backup and recovery teams combine archiving and disaster recovery solutions for storing data backups and protecting critical data for an extended period.
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Data analysis and research teams rely on archived data for research projects, data mining, trend analysis, and creating historical benchmarks.
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Security and data protection teams rely on data archiving platforms and data security software to protect preserved data from unauthorized access and breaches.
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Healthcare providers and medical records teams use archive storage platforms to store past patient records and infrequently accessed health data in compliance with state and federal laws. For example, the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) requires health entities to store patient records for adults for six years and deceased patients for two years. Similarly, they must retain records of newborns until they reach the majority age.
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Digital asset management teams that manage digital media at entertainment companies use archiving solutions for long-term retention of media assets like video, audio, and other content. They also use cloud storage solutions to enable users to stream audio or video across distributed regions.
Archive storage software pricing
The cost of archiving storage solutions depends on factors like:
- Amount and type of data
- Desired data retrieval time
- Security and compliance requirements
Data archiving solutions use one of the three cost models below.
Linear model: Vendors following this pricing model charge buyers on a per gigabyte (GB) basis for the data they store. The data storage cost increases linearly in this model, meaning that the cost per GB stays the same regardless of the data a company stores. Linear models are ideal for companies that don’t want the price to grow exponentially as the volume of data increases.
Asymmetric model: The cost of storing and retrieving data differs in this model. Cloud-based archive storage solutions use the asymmetric model to charge buyers separately for data storage and retrieval. Companies may opt for this model when they need to archive a high volume of data but retrieve a different amount.
Symmetric model: The cost of storing and retrieving data is the same in this model. On-premises archive storage solution providers use this pricing model to offer a fixed data storage and archival cost. This model suits companies that archive and retrieve data frequently.
Return on investment (ROI) for archive storage solutions
The ROI of archive storage systems depends on the following factors:
- Vendor discounts
- Promotions
- Pricing structure
- Data growth
- Data retrieval patterns
- Long-term storage plan
Organizations must conduct a thorough cost analysis while budgeting for archive storage solutions. It’s highly recommended that buyers consult with vendors and solution consultants to make informed decisions.
What are the alternatives to archive storage solutions?
Below are the archive storage software alternatives that companies typically use.
Archive storage solutions vs. backup software
Archive storage systems are different from backup software.
Data backup involves copying active operational data, which businesses may access or modify regularly. Companies update backup files frequently to have a reliable data restoration source for data protection and disaster recovery. It's also worth noting that backup and original data often stay in the exact location.
On the other hand, archived data is for retention purposes and may not be updated frequently.
Challenges with archive storage solutions
Some common challenges with archive storage solutions are:
Future data growth: Archive data growth significantly impacts organizations that produce large volumes of operational data. They end up paying for additional storage capacity while storing unused data for longer periods. The growing volume of archive data also makes it difficult for them to access and retrieve data easily.
The best way to tackle this challenge is to create an archive data management plan for easy data, access, retrieval, and deletion. Organizations can also deploy scalable, cloud-based archiving storage solutions to save administrative time while managing archive data workloads.
Data security and compliance: Failing to comply with regulations while keeping data secure is another critical challenge in data archiving.
For example, businesses must determine the laws and regulations for their industry and country of operation. Next, they should set up data security and access control measures besides meeting GDPR and other compliance regulations.
Archiving solutions with robust encryption, audit trail, and access control features ease how companies keep archived data secure and stay compliant.
Data preservation: Most archived data undergo an extended retention period, which causes media format obsolescence and data decay.
Moreover, archive systems go through technology upgrades during this time. That's why enterprises must implement data migration and refresh strategies, periodically validating data integrity.
Data storage and retrieval cost: Businesses using archive storage solutions also struggle with storing and retrieving data for extended periods. Companies can significantly reduce storage costs by implementing cost-effective storage tiers, data deduplication techniques, and data lifecycle management policies. Business owners should also consider understanding a solution's cost structure and factoring retrieval costs in budget planning.
Data accessibility and format compatibility: Perhaps the biggest post-implementation challenge is to ensure data remains accessible and compatible with changing technologies. Companies typically solve this problem by periodically reviewing and refreshing data formats and migrating data when necessary.
Which companies should buy archive storage solutions?
Companies of all sizes use archive storage solutions for storing inactive data. Below are some examples of companies that should consider buying archiving solutions.
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Financial institutions: Financial companies like brokerage firms, investment dealers, insurance providers, and banks buy archiving solutions to retain customer records and financial transactions longer.
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Healthcare organizations: Healthcare companies, including hospitals, medical homes, pay-as-you-go clinics, and managed care organizations, use archiving platforms for retaining patient records and medical images securely.
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Legal firms: All legal practices rely on archive storage solutions to store court records, contracts, and client files.
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Government agencies: Data archiving systems also help federal agencies store and protect sensitive information like census data, law enforcement records, and tax documents.
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Educational companies: Education industry players use archiving platforms for storing old student records, transcripts, and academic documents in an organized manner.
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Retail and manufacturing companies: Retail companies and manufacturers depend on archiving solutions to store purchase records, inventory documents, product design files, and production records cost-effectively.
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Media companies: Media and entertainment organizations use archiving platforms to store and retrieve audio and video files, production documents, and other vital data.
How to choose archive storage solutions
Buyers must evaluate their archived data storage, access, and retrieval requirements before discussing them with vendors. The following explains the step-by-step process that buyers can use to find suitable archiving storage tools.
Identify business needs and priorities
Evaluating business needs is the first step in identifying long-term data archiving requirements. Companies start with business impact analysis to understand resources they want to archive. At this stage, they also look at factors like asset types, data formats, storage duration, access frequency, and retrieval requirements. This information helps organizations in outlining data archiving service requirements. Moreover, they can use this information to create a standardized data archiving and retrieval policy that meets audit and compliance requirements.
Choose the necessary technology and features
This stage requires buyers to create a long list of suitable products that meet their archive data storage requirements. These solutions must have the necessary functionalities, such as:
- Inactive information storage
- Cold data retrieval upon request
- Access control over sensitive data
- Ability to handle growing data volumes
- Indexing and searching for retrieving metadata
- Tiered storage options for cost-effectiveness
- Long-term data integrity and validation options
- Compliance support, along with compliance task automation
- Data protection against unauthorized access and other vulnerabilities
Now, buyers narrow down the long list based on company-specific requirements and must-have functionalities. For example, storage needs will differ for two companies, one storing operational data and another large databases. That's why it's best to consider organizational data complexity and expected data growth before choosing a vendor.
When looking for segment-specific archival solutions, buyers can evaluate small business archiving solutions, archive storage solutions for medium-sized businesses, and enterprise archiving platforms on G2.
Review vendor vision, roadmap, viability, and support
This stage involves vetting selected vendors and conducting demos to evaluate whether or not a product meets their requirements efficiently. Ideally, a buyer should share detailed requirements in advance so a vendor knows what features to showcase during the demo.
Below are some questions buyers should ask vendors during the demo.
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Technologies and security protocols: What procedures does the vendor follow to archive, access, and retrieve data? What security measures do they follow to protect data from unauthorized access? Does the platform support archive containers a company plans to use?
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Media type, redundancy, and accessibility: Will the data be stored on a cloud, tape, or disk? What are the accessibility requirements and redundancy options? Does the platform have a native file system format?
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Data abstraction: Can the company abstract data from hardware in case of platform obsolescence or vendor lock-in?
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Administrative requirements: Does the platform support automation? What's the labor requirement in case there's no automation?
Evaluate the deployment and purchasing model
Now, buyers bring IT planners and key decision makers into the evaluation discussion to understand whether a platform plugs into the existing workflow or needs to be custom-built for their requirements. The final evaluation should also consider end users’ feedback on workflow integration, usability, and departmental requirements.
Buyers must also fully understand all costs, including data retrieval costs, recurring fees, and any other charges, before inking deals. They can ask the following questions:
- What will be the estimated archiving service cost for a contract period?
- What are the tiered storage options available?
- Does the frequency of data retrieval or archiving influence the total cost of ownership (TCO)?
- What is the data migration cost?
Put it all together
A buyer makes a final decision after getting buy-in from everyone on the selection committee, including end users. This buy-in is essential for faster implementation and solution adoption.
Implementation of archive storage solutions
Companies usually implement archive storage solutions after carefully reviewing organizational requirements and archiving needs. The following section outlines the steps businesses must consider during the implementation.
How is archive storage solution implemented?
Creating a data archiving strategy is crucial for efficient implementation of archiving solutions. Buyers start by identifying archiving needs and creating a data inventory. The next step is to create a retention schedule based on the data category.
Finally, they use the data archiving product to store inactive data, maintain data integrity, and keep data secure. Further processes may vary depending on an organization's requirements and chosen archiving solution.
Businesses must create a team of stakeholders responsible for the software implementation. This team typically comprises chief information officer (CIO), chief information security officer (CISO), compliance team, storage admins, and records management professionals.
Who is responsible for archive storage solutions implementation?
IT, data management, compliance, and business teams are jointly responsible for ensuring successful archive storage solution implementation. They also must ensure that data is securely archived, compliant with regulations, and accessible when needed.
What does the implementation process look like for archive storage solutions?
The implementation process starts with a detailed plan identifying a company's data archiving, retention, and retrieval needs. This plan is the foundation of how the solutions implementation team evaluates different archiving products based on capacity, performance, storage media, budget, and other features.
The actual implementation starts with software or hardware installation, system configuration, and data migration to a company's new solution. Next, the implementation team tests the platform for data archival and retrieval. The post-testing phase involves training end users on archiving and retrieving data.
When should you implement archive storage solutions?
Businesses of all sizes usually implement archiving solutions as they experience a need to retain historical data or backups for an extended period. Below are other situations when companies may consider opting for these platforms:
- Running out of primary storage space
- Increased data retention needs
- Infrequently accessed data consuming primary data storage space
- Privacy regulation compliance-related requirements
Archive storage solutions trends
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Active archiving emerging as a regular storage alternative: The increasing cost of cloud storage and affiliated data protection and egress fees are pushing enterprises to search for traditional storage alternatives like active archiving solutions. These systems enable enterprises to store data in one or multiple clouds and automatically ship data to cold storage tape archives after a set period.
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AI/MLOps for storage system management automation: With data growing rapidly, it's increasingly essential for organizations to find efficient ways to manage data storage. That's why modern enterprises are focusing on AI/MLOps integration to automate storage management processes and reduce administrators' burdens. MLOps-enabled storage platforms train on real-time granular systems logs and event data for automating manual tasks like capacity utilization and component failure management.
