What is the difference between Email Archive and Email backup? Which do you need?
From a distance, archiving and backing up can seem similar. Most of us are familiar with backing up a personal computer or smartphone. To a personal user, a backup of a smartphone may be indistinguishable from an archive. Both sound like ways to make sure important records of communication are preserved and protected. However, there are important differences between archiving and backing up, especially when it comes to emails. Both archiving and backup are vital components of data protection and disaster recovery, but they serve different purposes.
Backups are copies for point-in-time recovery
An email backup is a copy of the email data from a previous point in time. The backup will protect from corruption or loss of data. With a backup, you can protect against accidental deletion, security threats or system failures. Also, a backup allows you to put back all or some of an email system to its state from a recent period of time, such as last night or however your policies may schedule periodic backups.
Since backups are optimized for point-in-time recovery, they also change with each backup. Backups are usually used for a short term, from three to six months, and are periodically overwritten. They provide a layer of protection and can include such services as a cloud backup and recovery solution, which helps businesses secure sensitive data and minimize financial loss or business disruption.
Archives: movement, not replication
An email archive is a long-term retention of messages for referencing at a future date. An archive is used to find specific data from the past. It is not a copy of the data, but rather a primary instance of the data that has been moved to another, more cost-effective storage solution.
An archive is a searchable index of email items from the past, including keywords, date ranges or specific sender or recipient. A key feature of archive data is that no user can alter information. Regular use of an archive system helps keep recipient mailboxes under quota limits, with retention policy being configurable to match company policy.
Archives are:
- Accessible.
- Relocated from the original storage.
- Inactive.
- Long-term solution.
Archives also may be required for compliance purposes because email retention is now a requirement for most businesses under various rules and regulations, such as the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Archived data can also have business value beyond satisfying legal requirements.
What’s the best for you?
The best data protection and recovery solution combine both backups and archives. Properly used, backups and archives are complementary. You need to comply with email retention rules, but you also need to quickly get back to business if data is lost or corrupted. Alone, neither solves both problems, but together they combine as part of an overall data protection strategy.
Your business is unique, as are your needs for an email archive and backup solution. A trusted IT consultant can help you identify needs and tailor a data protection strategy that is right for you. At Think Tech Advisors, we have the expertise and experience to steer you in the right direction towards compliance and protection. Contact us today for more information.
