what are the benefits of sharepoint data archiving even have database backups?

Question

what are the benefits of sharepoint data archiving?

There is a sharepoint farm in which each web application has 2 TB of data and it all contains documents which stored as blobs in sql server.

Is we need any archiving product to archive those data even each web application has multiple content databases . we are creating new content database every 1 TB.

we have backups of all content databases we are using sharepoint enterprise search to search for the required documents from old content databases.

Is we need archiving?

Is we still need any archiving product to archive data from sharepoint and save in archiving storage?

Answer 1

First of all Archiving is not backup. Backup as you stated take copy as is and store it. This doesn't have any improvement on the SharePoint Farm and will be used only in case when Restore is required.

On the other hand Archiving eventually improves system performance. What archiving or retention policies does is, it moves old documents or records from content database to another archive destination leaving a link only. This will free up space in the site's content database and improves performance.

Good read - http://email-museum.com/2009/06/08/the-benefits-of-sharepoint-archiving/

http://community.aiim.org/blogs/dave-martin/2010/11/01/the-case-for-sharepoint-archiving--its-never-too-soon-to-deal-with-old-information

Answer 2

Backups are good for recovery in case of data loss.but archiving is different things.

By archiving documents that n sharepoint you will get many benefits

-performance of sharepoint will not impacted when u do archiving

• information is easy to access for end user when old data archived.
• not pay too much high cost as storage as you archived the content in low cost storage

It's depend upon your requirement that you want 3rd party solution or build your own

• you can write a workflow and send the documents in different location. Or some sour ions. But this required good effort to get full advantage of it
• 3rd party tools help you archive the data in way that it stores on low cost storage but information accessible for user at the same time with new content.

In nutshell archiving is good to keep your farm healthy and cost control

Good understanding http://www.sharepointgeoff.com/articles-2/sharepoint-archiving-–-defining-a-way-forward/

http://www.sharepointgeoff.com/articles-2/sharepoint-archiving-–-defining-a-way-forward/