Customers are using a combination of technologies to reduce the amount of data that needs backing up and store it in "active" archives that can be accessed more easily than typical off-site tape archives. Those technologies include disk-based storage, incremental backup, data compression or reduction, and WAN optimization.

Active archives

"For years, many customers viewed archiving only as taking backup tapes out of the normal rotation cycle and storing them off-site," says Rob Ensley, director of product marketing for information management products at EMC Corp. in Hopkinton, Mass. "We've seen a significant increase in people creating what we call active archives," keeping archived data on disk storage so it can be quickly accessed for regulatory or litigation purposes.

Oftentimes, the active archive is kept on storage built around ATA or Serial ATA drives, which offer performance and reliability close to that of Fibre Channel arrays but cost significantly less. One user taking that approach is Jamesburg, N.J.-based Argix Direct Inc., which tracks detailed information about shipments it makes to retail stores from its four package-sorting centers.

Until last year, the company had backed up that Microsoft SQL Server data to its headquarters using Backup Exec from Symantec Corp. However, over time, the amount of data grew so large that it threatened to exceed the company's backup window and slowed traffic on the WAN between headquarters and the sorting centers.