Surviving the data jungle

Storage vendors and resellers should work closely with customers to deliver the right storage requirements.

Half of all data lost is accidentally deleted, according to conventional wisdom. Think about the impact on your business if your systems failed for just one day. How much money would you lose?

Now imagine that the same systems failure resulted in complete loss of data: all your files, records and accounts lost forever. Could your company even survive?

Despite this danger, only 12 per cent of European boards of directors are taking responsibility for disaster recovery planning.

Choosing the right storage products to protect your data is vital and, when looking at the options, it is easy to see why companies might be confused.

Should they go for magneto-optical or Linear Tape Open, DVD or CD-R, digital linear tape or Symmetric Digital Subscriber Line? Then there is Raid, advanced intelligent tape, Blu-Ray (similar to DVD), Mammoth, Timberwolf, 3490 and ultra-density optical to consider.

When customers approach a vendor or reseller to provide a storage solution, they need an understanding of the technology available to make an informed decision.

This may seem obvious until we consider that many staff within an organisation do not understand the principles of storage, how it operates, what it is for and why they need it. This lack of understanding often leads to a simplistic approach, adding expensive primary storage which can cause more problems than it solves.

Secondary storage exists to complement your primary storage. It usually comes in the form of removable media, such as tape, magneto-optical, DVD or CD.

The type of secondary storage customers choose should depend on how often and how fast they need to access data. If files are not used regularly, they should store them in a less expensive form, where access time is slightly longer.

However, vitally important files must be available at the touch of a button. While tape can store very large files, the access to data is slower, whereas data stored on magneto-optical, DVD or CD can be accessed much more quickly.

Different companies operating within different sectors have many priorities to consider when managing data. Storage vendors and resellers should work closely together with their customers to identify their exact requirements.

Only then will those firms benefit from the right solution to survive the data jungle.

Ian Apps is product manager, EMEA, at Plasmon Data.