If you want to make sure that you can keep up with the competition, you need to invest in IT best practices. Today, technology plays a role in just about all daily business operations. When businesses do not spend enough time focusing on their IT best practices, they risk falling behind the competition. Therefore, you need to invest in the best practices in the IT field. This means focusing on your data and its overall rate of growth. There are a few important points that you should keep in mind.
Key Considerations with Data Growth
If you ever find yourself checking through the files of one of your old NAS systems or storage media applications, you may find that it is a total mess. With numerous duplicate files, almost duplicates, lots of old data that other employees left behind, it is easy to see why companies have a hard time keeping track of all of their information.
This is one of the biggest problems when it comes to data control today. When it comes to document retention, carrying out a manual cleaning process will not be realistic. Many junk files are out of sight, and administrators do not want to go through the trouble of looking at every file looking for duplicates and clearing them out. This is one of the major problems with backup data as well, which usually makes things worse. Even though backups are supposed to be used to restore missing data files, the sheer quantity of backups, which often take place daily, can cause files to build up in a short period of time.
If you decide to rebuild your data set from these backups, this can lead to errors even if people do not realize it. Therefore, it is important to protect data between backups. The software reduces the increments between backups, ensuring that all backup processes are handled efficiently. In an ideal world, duplicate files would be deleted regularly, and extra copies would only be kept if needed. This is where optional cloud backup and disaster recovery services are slowly changing the industry. Businesses that would like to maintain an edge on the competition should leverage cloud backup capabilities to appropriately handle their data backup and file retention needs.
The goal is to reduce the number of alternate copies that companies have. If there are too many alternate copies, then it can be hard to verify that recovery occurs. The decision of when to delete a file from the backup set can be complicated. In addition to figuring out when to start the oldest backups, it can also create a new base for continuous increments and other snapshots. There might also be legal action that has to be considered with this type of data management during the retention period. This is particularly important for those who work in the healthcare field, the finance field, or the military. There are important regulations regarding where files should be stored, how they should be protected, and how long they must be kept.
Establish a Firm Data Retention Policy
Companies need to have a firm data retention policy for backup copies when it comes to addressing the data storage dilemma. Companies must specify exactly where their data storage systems should be kept and how often data should be deleted when it comes to backup data. Using a pre-defined set of rules, metadata, and tags for each data object, it should be possible to automatically schedule files for deletion when they are no longer needed. They should also be encrypted in a certain manner based on these rules.
The vast majority of the storage systems that are used today operate using something called object storage. Objects stores can also lead to annoying problems when it comes to protecting objects from disc failure. By replicating drives and storage nodes, additional efficiency issues might arise, particularly when it comes to natural disasters. A solid backup system using object storage must remove duplicate files by showing unique hashes and comparing them to other objects present on the system. This should answer questions regarding what copies are valid and which copies are identical and therefore unnecessary.
This process is referred to as deduplication and can markedly reduce the size of the data that has to be backed up, saving businesses a significant amount of time. While this might not be possible if the files contain images, the risk of duplicating in this situation is low. While it could be possible to compress these files and reduce their size, this can also impact the speed with which someone can access these files. Furthermore, it can also lead to something known as decompression errors.
How Long Should Data Be Stored?
While it is important to think about legal requirements for retaining data and storing data, it is also important to think about how this can be done cost-effectively. One of the most important retention best practices is how long this data must be stored. In some situations, companies might have to deal with lifespan obligations when it comes to their data. In some cases, this data has to be stored for 15 years or more. Therefore, companies have to develop rules that an engine can use to define the backup and storage policy.
These rules need to consider various factors, including the user, the department, the file type, and the project. Where do these data backups need to go? Today, many companies are using something called public cloud storage. This is a cost-effective option when compared to the issues presented by having an internal backup system. Furthermore, because the data storage is off-site and offline, this can also help companies protect their data against hackers. This is important for risk management.
At the same time, business continuity, personal data, and other data types need to be properly encrypted when stored on the public cloud. This is an important data retention requirement. On the other hand, clouds today have multiple levels of storage. Therefore, this can help companies save a lot of money while still protecting their data.
Rely on the Help of Trained Professionals
When it comes to data storage, management, and retention practices, it is a good idea for companies to consider working with trained professionals. Business leaders have a lot to do during the course of a day and might not have time to think about their data rules all the time. Instead, it might be a good idea to outsource these issues to people who do this for a living. That way, business leaders can relax knowing that their data is protected while freeing up their own time to focus on other aspects of the business. These simple steps can go a long way toward helping companies ensure that their data is protected as much as possible.
