Data grooming or archiving is another technique that's used to reduce recovery-unit size. This approach lets you concentrate on the most important or mission-critical portions of your data and migrate the less important data to alternative storage locations, such as tape or optical media. When it comes to implementation, data grooming is similar to Remote Storage Service (RSS) for Windows, in which files are migrated to near-line storage according to policies. Exchange and SQL Server also use similar database archival and grooming techniques. But don't be fooled: If you relocate less-crucial data to an alternative storage location, you still need to figure out which level of protection to provide for that data or you could compound your problems. Whichever approach you use, reduce the amount of data in the primary storage location.
Make Your Life Easier
During the past few years, backup software vendors and OS and application vendors have brought us many improvements in hardware and software technology, which should be reason enough to take a fresh look at how you protect your organization's data. If you've already employed some of these new technologies, you might want to think about how you can reduce or optimize your recovery-unit size. If you can maximize your facility and minimize the data you must back up and restore, your job as an administrator will be much easier.
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