Question & Answer
Question
What are the differences between System Backup (data) and Archive?
Cause
When using Guardium Data Protection, it's essential to store and protect data correctly, whether for future access or in the event of a catastrophic situation where data recovery is necessary. It's common to confuse the main use of both System Backup (Data) and Archive. Below is a detailed explanation of the purpose of each and in which cases one should be used over the other.
Answer
Main purpose:
- Backup: Designed primarily for disaster recovery. It helps in restoring systems to an operational state after data loss events like system crashes, hardware failures, or accidental deletions.
- Archive: Aimed at long-term data retention. Archives are used for storing data that is no longer actively used but needs to be kept for historical, legal, or regulatory reasons.
Type of content:
- Backup: Contains a copy of all essential data, system configurations, and application data at a specific point in time.
- Archive: Stores audit data collected by the Guardium system over a specified range of time. For example: SQLs statements, policy violations, exceptions etc.
Retention Period:
- Backup: Kept for a shorter duration as newer backups replace older ones to manage storage space effectively.
- Archive: Data in archives is kept for much longer periods, often years or indefinitely, depending on compliance requirements and organizational policies. This data can be purged after archiving, and be loaded in the future as required.
In Summary:
Use backup if you require:
- Quickly restoring systems and data after hardware failures to minimize downtime.
- Reverting to a previous state before data was corrupted.
- Allowing a rollback to the original state if a system upgrade or migration leads to undesired results.
Use archive if you require:
- Storing audit data from a specific period of time that can later be restored for audit purposes.
- Purging old audit data. Archive allows to store this data on an external server before being purged, either due to space limitations or because it is not currently required (but it could be needed in the future).
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Document Information
Modified date:
27 June 2024
UID
ibm17147760