1

BUSINESS USERS ARE DATA HOARDERSData hoarding is rampant in most companies—for good reasons. Lines of business, including engineering, research, marketing, financial, and legal need to keep more data longer, and to have it all accessible. This data is valuable, sensitive, and includes everything from transaction information to intellectual property.

Each department has unique requirements for content retention, content life, and access SLAs. The challenge is to provide ongoing access to content and data in a resource-efficient strategy.

NOT ALL DATA IS CREATED EQUAL.

Between 50 and 80 percent of stored content is not active or changing, yet it is commonly stored in high-performance primary storage. Many IT departments keep this data on high-performance

primary storage to maintain accessibility for their business users. This is an inefficient use of valuable storage resources and over time impacts the overall performance of the storage infrastructure.

As the amount of data explodes, so will the costs of storing it. New storage solutions can archive content, make it accessible, and reduce retention costs by 50% or more and keep it protected—without disrupting business operations. The graphic at the end of this document provides an example of how this can work.

The table below provides an overview of technology components that can be incorporated into a data retention solution. It is important to understand that each technology has inherent characteristics that can dramatically impact “complete” solution costs. To properly compare cost and performance of alternative solutions, all functional attributes need to be understood, including: access technology (e.g. block, NAS), protection methods (e.g. RAID, erasure code, replication), additional retrieval or performance fees, failure and service models.

ACCESS MORE DATA. INCREASE PRODUCTIVITY. LOWER IT BURDEN.

Flash (Block Storage)

Performance Disk (Block Storage)

Public Cloud

Object Storage Disk

Capacity Disk (Block Storage)

Tape Library

$4,000 – $6,000

$750 – $1,500

$300 – $1,200

$200 – $300

$100 – $200

$50 – $150

$110 – $160

$21 – $42

$8 – $33

$3 – $4.5

$2 – $3

$1.4 – $4.2

Generally focused on active workflow and usually not part of an archive solution.

Generally focused on active workflow or as active cache portion of archive storage. This storage typically contains a single copy of primary data, and therefore data protection costs need to be considered.

Best for short duration hoarding strategies where capacity requirements are hard to predict. Lowest-cost options may be attractive for long-term vaulting when data protection is included in the solution. This is also attractive for organizations looking to offload administrative burdens.

Data-dispersed object storage solutions (erasure code) incorporate protection, so when comparing to other technologies, protection copies and software should be included in the alternatives.

Good fit for active cache portion of an archive solution.

Includes media and hardware. A great low-cost long-term media, where latencies (30 – 120 seconds) can be tolerated.

TECHNOLOGY COST / TB COST / TB / MONTH COMMENTS

2

BEST PRACTICES MAXIMIZE PERFORMANCE AND OPTIMIZE RESOURCES

The ultimate goal of a storage strategy is to provide data and content access to your business users while optimizing resource utilization. An alternative to keeping all data hoarders’ content on high-performance primary storage is an intelligent solution that can seamlessly and simply leverage public cloud, private cloud, and even low-cost tape into users’ environments and workflows.

BEST PRACTICE #1: Meet Compliance Requirements with a Cost-Effective Archive Strategy

To meet compliance requirements and avoid penalties, archived data must be available for retrieval. A Network Attached Storage (NAS)-based archive is the easiest way to integrate low-cost, accessible storage. The solution should be capable of supporting various storage media and include automation to both protect data and intelligently store inactive data to the lowest-cost storage media. Best-in-class solutions will offer higher-performance user access to freshly archived data that still might be active.

BEST PRACTICE #2: Retain Data for its Potential Value by Deploying an Active Archive

Public cloud and private cloud solutions based on object storage, disk, and tape libraries are excellent choices for cost-effective long-term retention and protection of valuable data. A high-performance NAS front end with intelligent tiering policies delivers a long-term scalable solution that makes it easy to integrate these technologies into existing environments while providing an optimal balance of access-performance and TCO.

BEST PRACTICE #3: Retain Content as the Life Blood of the Organization by Integrating Active Access and Content Protection

If you need to access and protect tens or hundreds of terabytes, or even petabytes of data, archive and protection must be integrated into the retention solution. It is too costly to continuously back up active content of these magnitudes. Data-dispersed object storage is a cost-effective way to simultaneously store and protect data. Higher-performance object storage technologies, such as those based on fountain erasure codes, deliver both access-performance suitable for extended online workflows and extreme data durability for highly valued content.

FINANCIAL REVIEW & RECOMMENDATIONSMORE STORAGE, AT A FRACTION OF THE COST

Developing a storage strategy that combines tiered storage with active archiving offers both performance and a cost-effective solution. In general, companies can get the same storage for half the cost with active archiving.

This strategy should include a smart, automated path to the cloud that offers simple access to public or private cloud storage.

Bottom line: In the 5-year TCO example below, this company would save well over $1,000,000 by adopting an archived storage solution for storing, accessing, and protecting data that is growing at 100TB per year.

CURRENT COSTS (CUSTOMER)

Primary Storage (per TB)

DR Storage (per TB)

$2,000

$150

Backup Storage (per TB)

Backup Software (per TB)

$1,000

$1,500

ARCHIVE DATA PER YEAR (TB) 100

SPENDING MODEL

CUMULATIVE SAVINGS

Status Quo

Cumulative

Archive Storage Solution Hardware (per TB)

Data Mover Storage (per TB)

$600

$650

Archive DR Storage (if not included) $150

Archive Model

Cumulative

Savings of Archive

ROI of Archive

CUMULATIVE SAVINGS

YEAR 1 YEAR 2 YEAR 3 YEAR 4 YEAR 5

$465,000 $465,000 $465,000 $465,000 $465,000

$465,000 $930,000 $1,395,000 $1,860,000 $2,325,000

$140,000 $140,000 $140,000 $140,000 $140,000

$140,000 $280,000 $420,000 $560,000 $700,000

$325,000

132%

$325,000

132%

$325,000

132%

$325,000

132%

$325,000

132%

$325,000 $650,000 $975,000 $1,300,000 $1,625,000

ARCHIVE SOLUTION COSTS (QUANTUM)

If you would like someone to help you with quotes and analysis, Quantum would be happy to help. To learn more about data archive storage, visit: www.quantum.com/archive.

3

$1,200,000

$1,800,000

$600,000

$800,000

$1,400,000

$200,000

$-Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Year 4 Year 5

$1,000,000

$1,600,000

$400,000

ST01840A_v01 Feb 2016