The explosion of unstructured data has storage pros scrambling to come up with cost-effective ways to store and manage information. Some have turned to scale-out, file-based storage systems based on commodity hardware to stem the tide and many are deploying scalable archiving systems and new tape technologies. This report from InfoStor outlines some different approaches to handling the growth of unstructured data.
“The overall growth rate of unstructured data is expected to reach 60% through 2014. IT organizations are trying to figure out cost effective ways to store information over a long period of time while retaining the ability to search for information, and locate and retrieve it in a timely manner.
“The economics of storage are such that when an archive reaches 100TB and data has to be kept for an indefinite period of time, the requirements for the infrastructure become more complex and using only spinning media becomes inefficient and costly. Across all industries the need to store data efficiently, while preserving its integrity, is both a regulatory as well as a business requirement.
“An open environment that can easily leverage next generation technology and deliver benefits as they become available on the market, whether it is denser storage, new storage interfaces, or use of new media.
“The technology to address these requirements continues to evolve. Today, organizations looking to build large, unstructured file repositories or archives may select one of the already available approaches/solutions, each with its own benefits and challenges.
“Across all solutions, additional technologies that automate management and reduce the data footprint will help resolve the challenge of storing increasing amounts of data for longer periods of time.”
Read the Full “Options for Long-Term Data Retention” Story at InfoStor.com
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