What to consider when deploying integrated backup, recovery and archive

Computerworld - Companies today rely on outdated backup and recovery processes. To expedite backup, IT professionals use differential or incremental backups, connect multiple servers to a tape system, or even skip backups or back up information less frequently. While this may increase backup speeds, it worsens recovery times, which should be the priority. By integrating and aligning backup, recovery and archival processes, organizations will be able to optimize the recovery and retrieval of information and improve production performance.
Backup and archiving are different
The first step in moving to a new system is to understand the difference between backup and archive. Backups are copies of active production information used when a problem arises within a production environment, and a recovery copy is needed to get the business up and running. Since backups are focused on constantly changing business information, a newer and known good copy is always preferred to an older copy, so backups are generally short-term and often overwritten.
Archives do not focus on "recovering" an application or business data, but allow for information retrieval -- usually at the level of a file, e-mail or other individual piece of content. Archives are not copies of production data, but rather the primary version of a piece of often inactive or nonchanging data. In fact, when data stops changing or is no longer frequently used, it is often best to move it to an archive, where it lives outside the backup window and can still be accessed.
Integrating backup and archive
There are some solid advantages to moving fixed content into an online active archive and out of the production environment. Tier 1 production system capacity is reduced. Backups are on smaller active data sets, so backup windows are shorter. Recoveries have content that is less static, and they are faster and easier to manage. Information retrievals come from the searchable online archive, not out of a backup image. Application performance improves and is more consistent since there is less data in the system.
Since the backup image will be smaller and more manageable over time, some companies use this time to move to new, affordable disk-based backup and recovery options. Disk-based backup and recovery delivers significant benefits relative to recovery time, manageability and reliability. When you couple disk-based recovery with active archiving, you experience a significant increase in recovery and retrieval capability.
Archiving technology
There are many new technologies to help organizations integrate and align backup, recovery and archiving. For archiving, there are software tools that work with applications to find and