CommVault Leverages Metadata to Simplify Archiving and E-Discovery

Five Best Practices for Disk Drive Storage Decisions

Storing massive amounts of data is relatively simple—at least until something actually needs to be recovered. One of the most time-consuming tasks that IT organizations generally rue is being asked to find a file or piece of data that’s been archived. They know they have it, but actually pinpointing where it is takes a lot of time and patience.

To simplify that effort, CommVault this week announced Simpana Reference Copy, which uses the metadata data that CommVault storage systems create to provide IT organizations with an index of what data and files are archived where.

According to Jeff Echols, senior director of product marketing and business development for CommVault, Simpana Reference Copy is an extension of the metadata the company first exposed when it unveiled version 10 of Simpana earlier this year. The difference now is instead of having to buy separate tools for e-Discovery from another vendor, customers can invoke Simpana Reference Copy to find any data related to a particular subject, including any and all e-mails that might have been sent.

Echols says Simpana Reference Copy works regardless of whether the data is stored locally or in a cloud service. In fact, Echols says Simpana Reference Copy pays for itself by eliminating a lot of the junk information that gets transferred with data into the cloud. All that information is now stored in an index, so the only thing that needs to be stored is the raw data itself, which Echols says can reduce storage capacity requirements by as much as 70 percent.

Today, the amount of Big Data being archived, sometimes known as Dark Data, is about to expand. Echols says the Simpana approach is more economical, and it makes it easier to recover data that might be more valuable in the future.

When it comes to e-Discovery, courts no longer accept any excuses about not being able to find data. Loss of data frequently results in fines and some generally uncomfortable questions about the competency of the IT organization from a judge. In fact, from an IT perspective, the best path is the one of the disinterested third party that provides the tools that allow end users to self-service their own requests for data, as long as the IT department doesn’t have to waste any time doing it for them.