Relentless data growth is inevitable as digital data has become critical to all aspects of human life over the course of the past 30 years, and it promises to play a much greater role over the next 30 years. Much of this data will be stored forever mandating the emergence of a more intelligent and highly secure long term storage infrastructure. Retention requirements vary widely based on the type of data, but archival data is rapidly piling up in every business. Given its potential value, modern data archiving has surpassed backup becoming a key strategy for enterprises and a required discipline hyperscale data centers.
Many data types are being stored indefinitely anticipating that its value will eventually be realized. Industry surveys indicate nearly 60% of businesses plan to retain increasing amounts of data in some digital format from 50 to 100 years or more and much of this data will never be modified or deleted. For many organizations, facing terabytes, petabytes and potentially exabytes of archive data for the first time can force the redesign of their entire storage strategy and infrastructure. Fortunately, the required technologies and architectures are now available to manage the modern archival challenges.
