Backup and archive. What’s the difference? Even people inside of IT sometimes see these two things as being the same, to the detriment of their organization. An article on Shortinfosec.net explains the difference well, and highlights the importance of including both backup and archiving in your IT infrastructure. Failing to make the distinction could cause you to choose an incorrect media, or have inadequate restore time relative to what your users need to do.

Right off the bat, the article gives an excellent example of a company undergoing an audit. After showing their backup system, they were asked about their archive, after which they pointed to their backup tapes–but the backup tapes were rotated every six months. Therefore, although the company had backup, they really had no archive. So what’s the difference? Backup is meant to create a copy of the current state, which can be used to restore a system, or a previously saved copy of a document, very quickly with a minimum of search requirement. An archive, on the other hand, is generally considered a historical reference that would be accessed less frequently. Backup and archive serve different purposes, and therefore may require different media.

One point in the article however, in describing the criteria for backup and archive solutions, states that backup needs to be easily accessible, while archives can have slower access, and to a degree this may be true. However, it’s not really necessary given the state of some of today’s archiving solutions. Traditional PST files for example, are a cumbersome way of archiving emails. And with increased reliance on information–including older information–workers are having to go back into archives more frequently and will be dependent on easy access. I still remember asking the IT guy for an old file, which meant I had to fill out a form, which got put on the bottom of a stack on his desk. And when he got around to it, he would send somebody into an air conditioned room full of tapes to hunt around for the one I needed. The process took days. Today, this scenario is totally unacceptable and unnecessary, and there’s no reason for relying on a third party IT guy to gain access to an archive. Ideally, it should be accessible from the desktop, and should be easily searched.