Information Lifecycle Management - What is ILM
These days, companies produce an incredible amount of new data every year. On average the amount of data grows 30-70% a year (depending on the type of business). Most of this data is rarely used 3 months after it's creation.
Storage of data is expensive. While the storage capacity per hard disk grows every year, the need for storage grows even faster. Managing all this data is expensive too. Data needs to be backed-up and new storage capacity must be purchased and installed.
Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) is about storing data on the most economical media for a certain time.
When data is generated (when you write a Word document, for instance), the file can be stored on a fast expensive SCSI disk. In the first few weeks you are working on the document, and several people might read it. Usually after two months everyone has read your document, and the file will hardly be opened anymore. ILM software can automatically move the document to a cheaper, slower IDE disk.
The location of the file is virtualized by the ILM software. The user thinks the file is still on the same location. People can still use the file, but reading it will not be as fast as in the beginning.
After a year, the document could be automatically moved to a tape by the ILM software. This time when the document is opened, it could take a few minutes before the file is available, because it has to be read from (cheap) tape.
If a document is read more frequently again, the file could be moved to the faster storage media by the ILM software.
ILM is a hype in the storage world. Among others, IBM, Storagetek, Hitachi, Legato, Veritas, EMC and HP deliver Information Lifecycle Management solutions.
This entry was posted on Thursday 13 March 2008