My boss, on his blog, has raised a pertinent question – if it’s so important, according to some vendors, that backup and archive are all achieved through the same product interface, then how many companies out there assign the role of archive administrator to the backup administrator? (Or vice versa).
I like this question; it’s kind of like the old conundrum of whether the dog wags the tail, or whether the tail wags the dog. That is, are companies that heavily push an integrated backup and archive interface:
- Responding to the needs of IT to meet current desired business functionality, or,
- Are they trying to drive IT in a way that perhaps doesn’t meet desired business functionality?
(Or indeed, something else entirely).
[Edit, further thoughts, 2010-03-03] I’ve been thinking more about this, and I have to say I can’t think of a single customer environment off-hand where the backup administrator is also responsible for archiving. Archiving seems to remain primarily the purdue of the storage administration teams in sites that I’m aware of, so it does beg the question – how beneficial is an integrated backup and archive administration process?
[Original wrap-up] So if you’ve got any thoughts on the integration of backup and archive administration, either at the software or the human resources layer, I’d encourage you to jump across to Mike’s blog and make your voice heard.
(As a first, I’ve disabled comments on this blog posting, so as to encourage discussion to remain in one location – the source article.)