ILM
We can also recommend an Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) strategy based around your Database. ILM is concerned with managing data during its lifetime. If the data already resides in a database, then why not base your ILM strategy around the database, because they are rich in the functionality required to implement an ILM solution. There are three common drivers for ILM
- Reducing storage costs
- Compliance
- Archiving
Storage costs can be significantly reduced by placing data on the most appropriate hardware depending on its use. Therefore frequently used data is placed on expensive, high-performance storage and infrequently accessed data can be placed on the range of low-cost storage devices that are available.This can results in significant reduction in storage costs.
Another approach to reduce storage costs is to compress the data. This could be achieved within your relational database, but data compression rates up to 90% are not uncommon when using a column-store database like Vertica.
Today data often has to be kept in accordance with regulatory compliance. e.g. all records must be retained for 7 years and cannot be altered. There is also another challenge with retaining this data and that is it is not uncommon that it must be accessible and within a limited time period. Retaining that data online in a database means that fines will not be incurred because data could not be retrieved in a timely fashion.
Archiving is usually considered to be when data is removed from a database, but here is a new approach to Archiving. Retain all that data in a database, but in a very compressed form such as that offerred by column-store database like Vertica.