NAS Archive from Real-Storage

	NAS Archive
	Two things in common for most NAS servers – storage usage always outgrows the plans and they are often filled with inactive data. It is recommended and necessary to archive less-used data to offload the NAS servers and to deliver improved response time, stability and availability. The NAStorage servers are integrated with the data archiving function, helping storage administrators to archive data on a regular basis according to different data retention policies.

	The Benefits Without proper data management, NAS servers are often filled with unneeded data that is rarely accessed. The situation will not be improved by adding additional storage. This short-term fix merely defers the problem as users will keep throwing in files, useful or not, when they realize there are more storage space available. With the NAS servers full of inactive data, server performance is impacted and response time lags. Most companies upgrade their storage infrastructure to tackle the problem. It means more investment and it is not hitting at the root cause of the problem. It is necessary to “clean up” storage occasionally. By moving inactive data out of the NAS servers, there can be an efficient use of storage capacity and NAS computing power. But how? It will be an extremely tedious job by manually selecting the files to be moved out. There must be rules for the storage system to do it automatically. So the first job of archiving data is to set up the policies according to the needs and requirement, like keeping files updated in the past 3 months in the on-line NAS servers, moving out files which are older than a specified date, etc. Once the policies are set, the NAS data archiving feature can help moving out historical data regularly. It allows storage administrators to filter out files by their ages, last modified time or archive bits, and then move them to a less expensive optical media.

	Supporting Double-layer DVD+R Writing All Real-Storage NAS storage solutions support double-layer DVD+R writers which write up to 8.5GB of data on one single disc. It makes the data archiving feature more powerful than single-layer DVD’s 4.7GB. If two DVD writers are installed, a NAS storage server can archive up to 17GB of data without changing discs.

	Combining the power of NAS disc servers and the data archiving function The data archiving feature of the NAStorage servers becomes more versatile by integrating with the NAStorage Disc Server function. During data archiving, the NAStorage servers will firstly turn the archive data into disc images, then burn them out, while the NAStorage Disc Servers manage and share CD/DVD discs in the form of disc images. You can choose to turn some less-frequently-used files to read-only disc images first, which can be mounted and shared to network users by using the Disc Server function. When the archived disc images are not in use for a long time, you can then choose to burn them to discs, further freeing up hard disk space.