Storage Tip: Mitigate pain of storage growth with active archiving, data deletion, and data de-duplication

What seems to be the problem? Estimates of annual storage growth are 60% and
annual budget growth around 4-5%. While your storage growth may not be that
high, the growth rate of storage is still likely to exceed the annual overall
decline in storage prices. Can you afford it? This problem isn't new, nor is
it only about how to squeeze out enough dollars to pay the bill. It's also a
question of management. Throw in power and cooling requirements, and will you
be able to handle the extra environmental demands?

What you need to know: Unfortunately, the problem will likely continue for
years to come. Not only must you do things better; you must do different things, and that requires a transformation in how you go about doing the storage business.
Note that the pressure of storage growth is only one of the elements driving
that transformation, but it is still enough to get you started thinking about
the problem. (Previous storage tips have already touched upon some of the drivers
and future storage tips will continue to do so.)

Actions that you can take include active archiving, data deletion, and data
de-duplication.

Active archiving can be the repository for your fixed content data. Since this
is likely to be the bulk of your data, what you do with active archiving data
can have a significant impact. Let's see why. First, your active production
data becomes smaller with the burden of fixed content data being co-mingled
within it. Thus, there is less data to be backed up. Active archiving data does
not necessarily have to be backed up in the traditional sense. Rather it must
be replicated -- which is not backup -- and the number of replications is likely
to be less than the number of copies that can be found on backups. Second, active
archive data is typically stored on a different tier of storage than is active
production data. That tier of storage may well be SATA disks that are more cost-efficient
than the FC disks upon which active production data is typically housed. But
you save not only on the disks themselves, but also on power and cooling as
SATA disks are greener than FC disks. (They use about the same power, but store
more data so you can store more data for the same power requirements.) Finally,
active archives can be subject to data de-duplication techniques, such as single
instance storage. Moreover, apart from cost and green savings, an active archive
is essential for data retention management of your data.

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