IBM System Storage IBM Information Archive: The next-generation information retention solution
Highlights Reduce cost Reduce disk capacity requirements with built-in data deduplication and compression features Eliminate the cost of services to migrate archive data to new hardware Reduce the total cost of ownership by moving information to lower-cost storage tiers Improve operational efficiency Configure up to three separate information repositories (collections) within one IBM Information Archive Simplify the management of archived information Manage risk Help your business meet the most stringent information retention requirements Provide a compliant storage repository with NENR, WORM, and encryption options Increase protection through new patent-pending tamper protection technology Evolving data retention requirements With the ever-increasing regulations surrounding data retention and accessibility requirements, IT administrators are looking for advanced archiving technologies to manage data throughout its lifecycle, providing capabilities for compliant or non-compliant data retention, data authenticity, security and end-of-life destruction. And as organizations address their information retention needs to comply with corporate governance, federal and local regulations, and business mandates, they must make specific documents and records available on demand. Many companies use non-erasable, non-rewriteable (NENR) technologies to help protect against accidental or intentional modification or deletion of information prior to its corporate or regulatory policy-driven expiration. Usually this information is stored on inexpensive archives and repositories, with organizational trends moving toward storing data on low-cost disk for fast retrieval and search, tape for long-term vaulting, or a combination of both to maximize operational efficiency. Overall, the management and control of business information can be a significant challenge when you consider factors such as costs, integration, performance, security, privacy, and longterm retention. In addition, audit requirements generally state that organizations must be able to find and access archived information quickly. To help businesses meet the growing challenge of managing and protecting business information with operational efficiency, IBM offers IBM Information Archive, a universal archiving repository for all types of content that addresses the complete information retention needs of midsize and enterprise clients faced with managing an increasing volume of information. IBM Information Archive helps clients store, retrieve, manage, share and secure regulated and non-regulated data, and is designed to be highly secure and offer extraordinary cost efficiency. 2
Manage risk Flexible data archiving that meets your needs IBM Information Archive brings a number of industry-leading capabilities to the information-retention marketplace. In order to meet the widest range of retention demands, IBM Information Archive allows IT administrators to customize retention policies based on unique and dynamically changing business requirements. It provides three information protection levels for up to three archive collections within a single system. This 3x3 combination provides the greatest flexibility of protection to help your organization meet unique information retention requirements. With different collections you have the flexibility of assigning customized levels of protection as well as retention policies for different kinds of data based on unique information protection needs. The information protection levels include: Basic Intermediate Maximum The basic protection level enables the greatest flexibility for managing an organization s information retention needs. Documents can be deleted before they expire. Retention periods can be increased and decreased. Documents with an extended retention period due to a The intermediate protection level allows IT administrators to increase and decrease retention periods as needed, but information deletion is only allowed after the retention period has expired. Documents cannot be deleted until the retention period expires. Retention periods can be increased and decreased. Documents with an extended retention period due to a retention hold cannot be deleted. You can modify the document protection option to maximum at any time but cannot lower it to basic. The collection can never be deleted. retention hold can be deleted. You can modify the document protection option to one of the other levels at any time. 3
the account open. For such information, IBM Information Archive enables administrators to set an event-based retention policy that can protect these records from deletion until a specific event occurs. The maximum protection level helps IT administrators manage information with strict business, legal or regulatory retention needs. Documents cannot be deleted until the end of their retention period. Documents with an extended retention period due to a retention hold cannot be deleted. Document retention periods can be increased but not decreased. After enabling maximum protection, you cannot modify the document protection option to one of the other levels. The collection can never be deleted. Customizable data retention features for dynamically changing environments In order to meet the widest range of retention demands, IBM Information Archive accepts and executes policies created by applications, and it offers customizable retention policies which can easily be set by your IT administrator based on the unique and dynamically changing retention requirements of your organization. These customizable policies include: Time-based and event-based information retention policies to protect information from intentional or accidental deletions or modifications. Retention hold and deletion hold policies to set an indefinite period of retention for a file, such as during legal discovery. For instance, some employee information must be retained as long as the person is employed with the company, and some customer data must be retained as long as the customer keeps You can also set polices to maintain data as NENR until deletion is permitted by a pre-determined expiration date (also referred to as time-based retention). Furthermore, IBM Information Archive is designed to enforce policies that have been set by applications using POSIX commands to identify specific retention dates in addition to extension dates. Data encryption for enhanced security IBM Information Archive has encryption capabilities that enable companies to increase security for data storage and remote data transmission. IBM Information Archive encryption can provide enhanced security for businesses via 128-bit AES or 56-bit DES encryption technology, and can manage encryption keys offered with IBM System Storage TS1120 and LTO-4 tape drives. 4
IBM Information Archive is designed to archive and retrieve documents from a wide range of software applications or by using industry standard interfaces such as Network File System (NFS). IBM Information Archive also supports a variant of the IBM Tivoli Storage Manager System Storage Archive Manager interface. Patent-pending tamper protection IBM Information Archive s patent-pending enhanced tamper protection technology enforces compliance and policy requirements by eliminating access to unrestricted administrative accounts within the archive system. Necessary administrative functions can be performed with a restricted administrative account that prevents the accidental or intentional deletion of archive data contrary to policies that were set when the data was archived. The enhanced tamper protection feature is optional and is enabled at the customer s discretion, but once enabled, it remains in force for the duration of the system s life. With IBM Information Archive, users can archive information directly to the protected storage from their workstations or file servers, and they can also retrieve information directly from the storage. Information can be archived via the IBM System Storage Archive Manager client or via NFS, and can be retrieved via IBM System Storage Archive Manager, NFS, or Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). To help customers manage information with different retention requirements, IBM Information Archive offers up to three collection options within a single system. A collection is a logical container used to store documents and define retention and access policies. Enabling customers to store documents within collections will provide them the flexibility to assign different levels of protection, access points, and retention policies for different kinds of information, and allow for information movement between IBM Information Archive s two storage tiers, according to the collection s classification. Improve operational efficiency Advanced storage management capabilities IBM Information Archive provides advanced storage management features to enable the management and enforcement of business, legal or regulatory data retention requirements. It is well-suited for archiving a broad range of electronic records, including both structured information and unstructured information such as e-mail, digital images, database applications, instant messages, account records, contracts, insurance claim documents, and other types of records. In addition, IBM Information Archive can save your organization time because it arrives pre-integrated and pre-configured. And it scales easily, enabling you to add and remove storage as needed, making your organization s storage management a nearly invisible business process that doesn t take valuable time away from primary work objectives. 5
Integration with other solutions The architecture of IBM Information Archive is designed to deliver enterprise-class reliability, scalability and performance. It helps enable centralized management through a single interface to support storage allocation and address application demands. Disaster recovery protection IBM Information Archive can also help protect data during disasters. It provides support for Enhanced Remote Mirroring, which enables two real-time synchronous or asynchronous copies of the information to be maintained on two separate IBM Information Archive devices. IBM Information Archive also provides the capability to use advanced LTO-3 or LTO-4 write-once, read-many (WORM) tape libraries to provide efficient and cost-effective copies of the information, and enables the IBM Information Archive database to support off-site data storage and recovery in the event of a failure or the need to relocate to an alternate facility. It features hardware redundancy and automatic data retention capabilities as well as system monitoring via IBM Systems Director and the IBM Integrated Solutions Console for proactive problem prevention and correction. In addition, it is designed to integrate seamlessly with other industry solutions, including IBM Content Management and IBM CloudBurst solutions, as well as many independent software vendor (ISV) solutions. Reduce cost Achieving lower total cost of ownership It is costly to keep all archived data in near-line storage for the duration of its retention period or for long-term archiving. For that reason, IBM Information Archive is designed to support transparent migration of information from disk to tape over the information lifecycle via policy-driven, hierarchical storage management (HSM) capabilities. Taking advantage of these automated capabilities can help you eliminate the cost of services to migrate to new hardware. It can also greatly reduce the administrative burden of managing your archived information, keeping operational costs down over the long term. 6
IBM Information Archive enables a true storage mix of disk and tape technologies within its archive, providing the low-cost option of long-term tape storage. However, for very long-term retention, data must be migrated to newer media and associated technologies so that in addition to being stored, it can always be read. Keeping your data in a readable format over very long retention periods can impose a significant cost burden. Fortunately, IBM Information Archive provides a built-in media and technology migration capability that can help your organization mitigate those cost issues. The business benefits of next-generation archiving IBM Information Archive provides an information retention solution for medium and large enterprises across the globe. It offers a secure storage archiving repository for all types of archived information that helps you reduce storage costs and business risks while improving operational efficiencies. Businesses in industries such as financial services, insurance, banking, medical and life sciences, digital media, government, and other industries are prime candidates to achieve substantial benefits from this solution. IBM Information Archive also helps organizations achieve a lower total cost of ownership by providing imbedded deduplication and compression capabilities. These features can help you optimize storage capacity and improve productivity. Optional IBM services for faster deployments IBM offers optional services to help you fortify your storage strategies. At the intersection of technology and business, Business Consulting Services from IBM Global Business Services can assist your organization in developing and implementing strategies for storing, retrieving, managing, sharing and securing information on demand. These strategies can help you address critical issues such as financial and regulatory reporting and compliance. IBM Global Technology Services can also provide an array of services to help your company take a broad-based approach to managing information through enterprise-wide performance management and business intelligence services. Their services can help you implement processes that support the basic building blocks of planning, managing and optimizing your business. IBM Information Archive can help your business mitigate risk by preventing unauthorized deletion or modification of company information assets, whether those assets consist of structured or unstructured information. It provides the opportunity for organizations to safeguard information using an information lifecycle management approach to meet unique business needs and corporate governance, industry or government regulations. It also offers non-disruptive recovery of archived information. Technology for a more dynamic infrastructure Today s organizations are increasingly applying service management, virtualization, energy efficiency, asset management, information infrastructure, business resiliency, and security initiatives across the enterprise. IBM Information Archive can help you leverage your dynamic infrastructure to help your organization become an on-demand business that can respond with flexibility and speed to customer demands, competitive threats, and market opportunities. 7
Using IBM Information Archive can help your company meet the on-demand requirements of storing, retrieving, managing, sharing and securing business information. And the solution s integration capabilities, support of open standards, and automatic data retention features can help your company reap the benefits of a more dynamic infrastructure through improved productivity, reduced costs, and managed risk. For more information To learn more about how IBM Information Archive can help you meet the challenges of managing and protecting business information with operational efficiency, contact your IBM representative or IBM Business Partner, or visit ibm.com/storage Copyright IBM Corporation 2009 IBM Systems and Technology Group Route 100 Somers, NY 10589 U.S.A. Produced in the United States of America October 2009 All Rights Reserved IBM, the IBM logo, ibm.com and System Storage are trademarks or registered trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both. If these and other IBM trademarked terms are marked on their first occurrence in this information with a trademark symbol ( or ), these symbols indicate U.S. registered or common law trademarks owned by IBM at the time this information was published. Such trademarks may also be registered or common law trademarks in other countries. A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at Copyright and trademark information at ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml Other company, product and service names may be trademarks or service marks of others. This document could include technical inaccuracies or typographical errors. IBM may not offer the products, services or features discussed in this document in other countries, and the product information may be subject to change without notice. Consult your local IBM business contact for information on the product or services available in your area. Any statements regarding IBM s future direction and intent are subject to change or withdrawal without notice, and represent goals and objectives only. The information contained in this document is current as of the initial date of publication only and is subject to change without notice. All performance information was determined in a controlled environment. Actual results may vary. Performance information is provided AS IS and no warranties or guarantees are expressed or implied by IBM. Information concerning non-ibm products was obtained from the suppliers of their products their published announcements or other publicly available sources. Questions on the capabilities of the non-ibm products should be addressed with the suppliers. IBM does not warrant that the information offered herein will meet your requirements or those of your distributors or customers. IBM provides this information AS IS without warranty. IBM disclaims all warranties, express or implied, including the implied warranties of noninfringement, merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose or noninfringement. IBM products are warranted according to the terms and conditions of the agreements under which they are provided. TSB03015-USEN-00