A comprehensive guide to data archiving strategy

As businesses expand and data creation speeds up, managing massive amounts of information becomes a pressing issue across all industries. Today’s organisations must have a robust data storage policy — especially when there are compliance requirements for data retention. This is a particularly urgent issue in industries such as healthcare and finance, where long-term data storage is necessary.

A strong data archiving strategy is one way to meet these needs. The meaning of data archiving is the process of managing, preserving, and storing data sets that are unnecessary for everyday operations but necessary for future reference. This may also include data protection and regulatory or historical functionalities within various business operations.

While it might be tempting to designate all data for long-term retention, it’s often not that simple. Different data storage solutions offer various pros and cons. Likewise, many businesses need to balance data storage costs with reducing retrieval times for critical archived files. Effective data archiving keeps storage systems efficient, guarantees the availability of vital data, and considers pricing.

In this blog, we’ll discuss the importance of data archiving, how it relates to data integrity, and how organisations can implement the right archiving system to achieve business goals and remain compliant.

What is data archiving?

Data archiving involves moving data no longer needed for daily operations. Often, data gets placed into long-term repositories for preservation and accessibility for future uses.

What is archiving vs backup?

A crucial distinction to make is that of data archiving versus data backups, as each has unique use cases:

• Data archiving ensures historical data remains accessible and intact over the long haul (years or decades).
• Data backups are for short-term recovery in the event of data loss or disaster recovery, restoring the data when needed to allow business continuity.

Understanding what data archiving is and how it integrates into a broader data retention policy is essential to its effectiveness. That’s because effective data archiving involves many factors — not only in relocating data but also safeguarding its ongoing improvement and automation.

What are the benefits of data archiving?

There are several benefits of archiving data:

1. It helps reduce storage costs by transferring inactive data from costly primary storage systems to more economical archival solutions.

2. It frees up space and enhances the performance of active storage systems.

3. It improves security by storing sensitive information in a controlled environment — minimising the risks of breaches or unauthorised access.

4. It helps organisations comply with legal and regulatory mandates by retaining data securely while keeping it available within the retention period.

5. It is the backbone of an effective data lifecycle management, as organisations only keep data as long as necessary — and appropriately archive it when no longer needed.

What is the biggest challenge in data archiving?

Despite the many advantages to archiving data, there are also potential challenges. The biggest issues include:

• Managing the continuous growth of data and ensuring there is enough storage scalability to keep up with storage demand
• Ensuring that archived information remains accessible over time
• Managing storage obsolescence, such as moving to more advanced storage solutions
• Remaining compliant with any changing regulations

Organisations must plan carefully to address these issues, keeping their data archiving strategy effective and adaptable over time.

Data archiving strategies

There are several types of data archiving methods available, each with benefits and limitations:

• On-premises archiving: This is storing data within the organisation’s infrastructure or in a data centre facility. It allows for more control and security, as the data remains within the company’s physical control. However, the trade-off often comes in the form of higher costs and the need for ongoing maintenance.
  
  

• Cloud data archiving: This method provides a more scalable, cost-effective, and flexible alternative. By leveraging cloud storage, organisations can store large volumes of data without the need for upfront hardware investments. This approach is particularly appealing for organisations looking to scale their storage capacity quickly and efficiently. A Tata Consultancy Services survey highlighted this trend, with 59% of Chief Information Officers listing cloud storage as essential for their future archiving needs.
  
  

• A hybrid solution: This method combines the best of both worlds. It allows organisations to retain control of sensitive or mission-critical data. Meanwhile, they use cloud storage for less-critical information. This dual approach provides flexibility that makes it easier to meet specific regulatory requirements. With the rise of cloud data archives creating new ways to optimise data management, organisations can choose the best object storage method for each workload.

Best practices for data archiving

A successful data archiving strategy includes the following best practices:

• Classifying data: A first step towards successful archiving is classifying your data based on its value, sensitivity, and relevance. This helps determine which data to archive — and when.
  
  

• Managing the data lifecycle: Automating the transition of data from active use to archival and eventually to deletion, keeps organisations in line with data retention policies. This helps comply with legal requirements and avoid retaining unnecessary information.
  
  

• Maintaining regular audits and compliance checks: Regular audits help ease compliance with changing regulations and help identify and remove unnecessary data, providing low-cost archival maintenance.
  
  

• Ensuring data integrity: Organisations must be able to trust their data. As such, it’s rcritical to maintain its integrity over time, using techniques like access controls and encryption.
  
  

• Using advanced technologies: Many businesses are beginning to streamline the archiving process using tools like AI. This makes it faster, easier, and less error-prone to manage large volumes of data.

Long-term data archiving

Data archiving is a long-term business function. As such, selecting the right storage medium and format is essential. For example, tape storage is traditionally widely used and known for its durability, making it a reliable option — although it can be harder to archive large amounts of data and access it quickly. Data centres and cloud storage provide greater flexibility and ease of access, which can be crucial as business needs increasingly move to the cloud.

Implementing a data archiving strategy with Digital Realty

Working with Digital Realty gives organisations choices, starting with a range of tailored data archiving solutions that meet the unique business needs, whether that’s on-premises archiving, cloud-based archiving, or a hybrid approach.

Of course, security and compliance are at the heart of our operations, along with a range of data centre services that give unlimited flexibility and scalability. Simply pick the service that best suits the business data storage requirements to get started.

Partnering with Digital Realty for your data archiving strategy offers peace of mind. With a secure, compliant, and disaster-resilient environment, our data centre infrastructure provides a reliable solution, no matter the reason for archiving data — from regulatory compliance to operational efficiency to long-term storage.

The importance of archiving data

A robust data archiving strategy is crucial to keeping valuable information secure, accessible, and flexible. In addition to adhering to best practices when archiving data, it also helps organisations follow any applicable regulatory requirements — a win-win.

The global data centre infrastructure offered by Digital Realty allows organisations to develop a data archiving strategy that matches business needs. With our on-premises options, hybrid setups, and cloud data archive solutions, organisations can secure their data for the long term. Contact us today to learn more about your options.

Frequently asked questions

What is the purpose of archiving?

The purpose of data archiving is to securely store data no longer in regular use. However, organisations may still need to retain it for legal compliance, historical records, or future reference. Archiving preserves this data without occupying costly and critical active storage space.

What is meant by data archiving?

Data archiving means transferring inactive data to a specialised storage system. Often, these are for long-term retention. This process ensures the data remains safe, unaltered, and accessible for future needs.

What is the benefit of archiving data?

Archiving data offers several benefits, including:

• Lowering active storage costs

• Improving data security

• Freeing up active storage

• Complying with legal standards

• Keeping essential information accessible over time

What are the steps in data archiving?

The data archiving process involves first determining the importance of the data. Then, further steps include choosing a suitable storage solution, setting retention policies, and maintaining the data throughout its lifecycle.

What is the best practice for data archiving?

Best practices for data archiving include:

• Categorising data based on its value

• Creating a broader data management strategy

• Monitoring archived data regularly

• Adhering to defined retention strategies

What are the different ways of archiving?

Organisations can archive data using the following methods:

• On-premises storage, which provides control and security but comes at a higher price

• Cloud-based archiving solutions for scalability, flexibility, and cost-efficiency

• Hybrid models that combine the best of both

What is the ISO standard for data archiving?

The ISO 11506:2017 publication outlines several best practices for archiving data. Its requirements help keep information reliable, accessible, and unaltered, preserving it over the long term.¹

Footnotes:

¹ International Organization for Standardization, ISO 11506:2017, July, 2017.