Unlocking the business value of your long-term data

Let’s say you have five, ten, even twenty years worth of customer records and transactions. Then comes the time when you want to access a particular file from several years back – and need to have it in your hands today. How easy is it to locate, retrieve, and restore? And how do you know the information you pull from your system is still as accurate and intact as it was when it was first archived years ago?
How easy – or not – your archive data is to access is a function of your archive solution. Traditionally, companies have stored long-term data on tape, then assembled their collection of tapes into a repository and called that their data “archive.” Many people also confuse backup with archiving, and think that having a copy of a file backed up to a tape somewhere also constitutes having an “archive.”

But archiving to tape poses particular problems. Because tape is slow, hard to access, and requires a fair amount of administrative support (someone has to search for where a particular file resides, physically locate that tape, restore the tape volume on disk, and find that file), data retrieval can be an arduous, time consuming, and frustrating task. Multiply all the steps it takes to retrieve one customer’s information times hundreds or even thousands of customers and transactions, and you have a full-time job on your hands just accessing old data.

Because archive data retrieval from tape is such a chore, many financial organizations aren’t even considering that their digital assets are just that – assets. They need to consider that all this information they’re keeping – whether the goal of the archive is to satisfy regulatory compliance, litigation support, records management, or data management requirements – is worth so much more to their organization than just the physical space it occupies or the resources it takes to maintain it. For digital data to be a true and valuable asset, it must be part of a total solution that provides easy access to data, as well as has features that ensure data integrity, and support search and indexing capabilities.

What Makes a Successful Archive Solution?

Your archive data has a particular set of attributes that is different from transactional data or data protection. To have an archive solution that lets you proactively manage your digital assets, it must have the following requirements:

• Fast, easy data access – Lets you retrieve the exact data you need without additional IT assistance.
• Cost effectiveness and scalability – Because data is stored long-term, the storage mechanism must be at a cost comparable to tape, and must scale smoothly as archive volumes grow.
• Content retrieval and search capabilities – Because archives grow exponentially over time, you must be able to easily locate and retrieve specific information through the use of metadata or other user-defined attributes.
• Data retention and disposition – Lets you retain data for a long period of time, even beyond the life of the storage device. Compliance requirements also dictate how archived data should be disposed of once the retention period expires.
• Data immutability and data integrity – Guarantees that archive data is protected against deletion or modification until a specific expiration date, and has been checked periodically to verify it is still intact and correct.

MAID and Long-Term Data Storage

To address these needs in the marketplace, COPAN Systems offers intelligent storage solutions that unlock the value of long-term data. Based on an enhanced MAID (Massive Array of Idle Disks) platform, COPAN Systems’ Revolution 200 series of products combines the reliability and responsiveness of disk with the affordability and scale of tape.

The Revolution 220T and 220TX have a virtual tape personality, and are ideal for backup/restore and disaster recovery applications. The Revolution 220A is an archive product that uses a file access personality, and lets companies archive and easily retrieve all their digital assets using standard protocols. All Revolution 200 series products provide up to 224 TB of raw storage capacity on up to 896 250GB SATA drives in a single cabinet.

COPAN Systems is the first company to leverage the full potential of MAID technology at the enterprise level, which provides substantial benefits in the management of long-term data. With COPAN Systems’ enhanced MAID platform, a maximum of 25% of the drives are powered on at any one time when they contain data that is requested by a specific application – then are powered off when they are not needed. This platform is particularly designed for the challenges of storing long-term data, and the infrequent access requirements of archive data. Because of this, MAID solutions give your company the following advantages:

• More predictable backups and faster access for data restores
• Extended SATA disk drive service life by four (4) times, resulting in less down time
• Dramatically reduced power consumption and cooling requirements
• Massive scalability and high density, resulting in much more efficient use of datacenter floor space
Because the drives spin only when necessary, this results in much lower operating costs than traditional disk-based systems, and is also competitive with the cost of automated tape libraries. In addition, the higher density packaging of the drives provides a smaller footprint, and consumes far less power for operations and cooling. The overall result is cost efficiency, higher reliability, and superior performance. One of COPAN Systems’ customers in the financial industry has even reported cost savings in the tens of thousands of dollars annually – based on power consumption alone!

COPAN Systems’ Revolution 200 series utilizes patent-pending technologies that provide unique benefits:

• Three-Tier System Architecture – Three levels of processing separate functionality, simplify system management of long-term data, and allow performance to scale with capacity.
• POWER MANAGED RAID® Software – This controlled power management increases the service life of the drives, which significantly increases overall data reliability. It also provides a lower cost of ownership, as longer drive life means less management of storage devices focused on long-term data retention.
• DISK AEROBICS® Software – Proactively monitors and manages drive health by periodically exercising all disks, verifying data integrity, and detecting potential drive failures before they occur. Data is copied from a “suspect” drive to a new “healthy” spare drive, avoiding lengthy RAID rebuild times and data loss. DISK AEROBICS also checks your data at least once every thirty days, so you can be assured that your data is still accurate and intact – even if you have not accessed it for awhile.

A Financially Solid Archive Solution: The Revolution 220A

In order for financial organizations like yours to create competitive advantage from their long-term data, you need an archive solution that gives you immediate access to specific information with search and indexing capabilities. You also need a solution that is cost effective, and can dynamically scale with your continuously-growing archive needs as your customer records grow.

COPAN Systems’ Revolution 220A enables successful archiving, and lets you:

• Retain all your digital assets with simple and immediate store and retrieve capabilities at the file level.
• Have immediate online access to your data – when you need it and in the condition you stored it.
• Repurpose your digital assets to support new product development or generate new business.
• Scale your storage solution with your growing archive needs (up to 1 billion files) to house massive amounts of financial data that accumulate over time in today’s digital world.
• Eliminate the need for cumbersome tape archives by being able to cost effectively store archive data on disk
• Improve customer service with fast access to all your archive information.
• Easily and efficiently (without the need for slow and labor-intensive tape libraries) locate the transactional records you need to analyze financial trends or research customer information (ex: stocks, transactions, etc.)

The Revolution 220A is powered by COPAN Systems’ proprietary MILLENNIA ARCHIVE ™ software, which enables:

• File indexing and searches based on user-defined fields.
• Automated data movement directly to the MAID platform to address key business needs.
• Fast, easy retrieval of the correct file version of critical documents.
• Identifiable audit trails to let you verify who has accessed your data – and when.
• Protection against file deletion or modification, and verifies authenticity upon retrieval using a SHA 256 hash.
• Designation of a specific retention period and expiration date for each file. Unlike with tape, an automatic mechanism tracks and deletes all copies of archive data when needed. Similarly, the MILLENNIA ARCHIVE software supports on-demand or batch archiving.

A Real World Example

A leading global financial institution is using the COPAN Systems Revolution 220A to store stock “tick” data that reflects daily stock trading transactions. This data needs to be maintained for an extremely long period of time for stock market analysis purposes and corporate governance requirements. The data is currently kept on primary storage for thirty days, after which the MILLENNIA ARCHIVE software migrates the data to the Revolution 220A. Prior to deploying the Revolution 220A, this information was stored on tape, and retrieving a specific stock trade transaction could take up to two weeks, given the operational complexities of locating and handling tape media. By archiving this data onto the Revolution 220A, all stock tick data is effectively available online. An individual stock analyst with authorization can retrieve data directly from the archive using NFS mounts and reads, resulting in greater operating efficiencies and improved customer service.

The Result

With COPAN Systems’ Revolution 220A, having online access to your archive data lets financial organizations like yours improve customer service, identify new financial products and sales opportunities, better analyze financial trends, and facilitate regulatory and legal compliance. The result is significant competitive advantage.