The Protected DLM model intelligently integrates archiving with the critical functions of backup. The process highlights the distinction between archiving and backup and the need for both technologies to address different business problems. The purpose of backup is to create copies of the online environment that can be recovered rapidly in the event of failure or data loss. Backup is oriented towards storing and moving large amounts of data and it does not purport to make data in backup savesets immediately available. The purpose of archiving is to provide an alternate, secure place for data that must be kept for long periods of time. Archiving provides a granular level of management over data that backup does not. Not only can each data entity put in the archive be retained, migrated, and stored according to its own rules, but the archive ensures that the data can be quickly located and restored. With Protected DLM, archived data does not need to be backed up routinely because the archive consists of multiple repository copies, some of which can be removed or located offsite alongside backup tapes.

The differences between backup and archiving are not stressed here to discredit either approach, but rather to emphasise the importance of both.


This is why Protected DLM is fundamentally different to both traditional HSM utilities and data classification products. Protected DLM integrates data protection, business continuance, and disaster recovery strategies into the long-term retention and management of data as its lifecycle requirements cause it to be copied into and subsequently repositioned entirely to a secondary storage archive. It does this by allowing archives to be defined as multiple copies on multiple media types and it uses a distributed architecture to allow these copies to be written and managed at different network locations. Protected DLM represents the full integration of archiving with other vital storage management processes into a single enterprise-wide facility for ensuring that data is available for both operational and disaster recovery, that it is protected and compliantly retained for suitable periods, and that the most cost effective storage technology can be leveraged to minimise storage and storage management costs.