Ya, I know I didn't specify enough, I was contacted about this last minute (10 minutes before the meeting in fact), and asked to provide options.
The files in question have a retention requirement of 50 years, due to some Federal funding, or somesuch... They currently reside on a Novell shared drive. Our first option is to transfer them to our Windows-based, homegrown document library. Only real problem with this is that it's robbing Peter to pay Paul, and we end up in the same boat, of running out of drive space. There are to be further discussions, with questions asked about access: how often, how quickly do they need it, etc. At the moment, we're talking 200-300GB, with a growth of about 10GB per month. My thoughts are to keep the last x years highly available, in the document library, and archive the rest to DVDs, or a cheap, external hard drive that can be housed at our warm site. Irregardless, the data would need to be transferred to new media periodically, as no one method would last forever. >>> Ben Scott <mailvor...@gmail.com> 6/13/2011 11:40 AM >>> On Mon, Jun 13, 2011 at 12:53 PM, Joseph Heaton <jhea...@dfg.ca.gov> wrote: > How do you guys address issues of having to keep certain data for 10, 50 > years, or more? You need to define the problem better. In the IT world, there's a *huge* difference between "10 years" and "more than 50 years". Most technologies from 2001 are still on the market today. In 1961, ASCII hadn't been invented yet, transistorized computers were cutting-edge, and vacuum tubes common. The challenge -- and thus the cost -- varies proportionately with time. For example, I know IBM has mag tape systems they claim will store for decades, but they're very expensive. If you really only need ten years, paying for that makes no sense. Questions include: How much data? What type? Is it easily represented in a human-readable form? How often are you going to need to access this data (every day, once a year, stick it in a tape vault and forget about it)? Any particular threats (flood, human attack, etc.)? Depending on the specifics, the best answer might be anything from "print it out and store the paper in a cave in Arizona" to "keep it on your production RAID array, carrying it forward as you upgrade". -- Ben ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ --- To manage subscriptions click here: http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ or send an email to listmana...@lyris.sunbeltsoftware.com with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ --- To manage subscriptions click here: http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ or send an email to listmana...@lyris.sunbeltsoftware.com with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin
