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      Data Archiving with Tiger Bridge

      Step-by-step Guide for Setting Up Data Archiving with Tiger Bridge

      Introduction

      Well over half of a typical organisation’s data may be infrequently accessed.

      Utilising cloud archive tiers brings the following key benefits:

      No Initial Bulk Investment

      You can start archiving immediately rather than purchasing and maintaining more local storage.

      Manage Your Backups Easily

      Reduce admin overhead by allowing the cloud to manage backups off-site.

      Meet Compliancy Requirements

      Deal with longer retention requirements by offloading data to the cloud.

      Reduce your costs

      Benefit from data storage in low-cost archive tiers and simplified administration.

      Why Tiger Bridge?

      Tiger Bridge is a software-only data management solution that enables you to move infrequently accessed data to lower-cost cloud archive tiers, thus reducing time and money spent maintaining more local storage.

      Tiger Bridge uses non-proprietary formats, which means you maintain transparent access to your archived data. It does not introduce any disruptions to your operations or any IT complexities.

      Check out our YouTube channel to get more information about Bridge's full range of features.


      There are three methods for archiving data to the cloud:

      1. Archive policies
      2. Manual archive jobs
      3. Archive tier as a direct target

      These can be used together or separately.

      Before You Start

      Make sure you have Tiger Bridge installed, running, and using a populated local folder as a source with a specified target on any cloud provider that has an archive tier.

      For archiving, Tiger Bridge allows you to also set the Rehydration priority (Microsoft Azure) or the Archive retrieval option (AWS).

      • The Rehydration priority can be set to Standard or High. As per Microsoft at the time of creation of this article, with Standard priority, the rehydration request will be processed in order of receival and may take up to 15 hours, while with High priority, the request will be prioritised over standard requests and may take under an hour to finish (for files up to 10 GB).



      • The Archive retrieval option (AWS) can be set to Standard, Bulk or Expedited. Expedited requests associated with higher costs need from 1 to 3 minutes to be recovered, Standard requests need 3 to 5 hours and Bulk requests - 5 to 12 hours.

      NOTE!

      A key functionality of Tiger Bridge is that it can enable two or three-tier flow where frequently used data is kept locally while cold and archive data is intelligently moved to the cloud. Furthermore, it can have almost real-time replication policy to make sure all changes you make locally are replicated to the cloud.

      Archive Policies

      This method allows you to automatically move data between different cloud tiers based on size and frequency of access. To create an archive policy for a specific source:

      1. Select the source in the Tiger Bridge Configuration and then click the Add policy button.



      2. On the Policy type window, select Archive.



      3. You can define the time period of inactivity after which the files will be archived, as well as the minimum file size.

      NOTE!

      Tiger Bridge looks at the last accessed, not modified time. Even if your file was only copied or opened and closed recently, it will not be archived.


      You can see statistics for your archived files at different locations:

      • When you select your source in the Tiger Bridge Configuration

      • When you right-click your source folder and select Properties, then click on the Bridge tab



      • When you check your target on the cloud provider.

      Archive policies allow you to achieve the desired storage optimization, but you cannot be sure that all files in a specific directory will be archived.

      For example, if you have finished working on a project, you may want to manually archive the project files as it may take some time until the automatic archive policy conditions are met.

      Manual Archive Jobs

      Using this method, you can archive data manually, meaning you can pick and choose which particular files and folders you want to archive.

      1. Right-click the file or folder you want to archive.
        Go to the Tiger Bridge menu and select Move to Archive. 



      2. A warning appears indicating that fees may apply for this operation. 
        Confirm that you agree to continue.



      Archived files are reflected in the Tiger Bridge statistics, your cloud portal, and folder Properties.

      This method gives you more control over your data management, but it is more time-consuming.

      Archive Tier as a Direct Target

      This method allows all your data to be automatically replicated to the cloud archive tier only.

      1. Choose a source folder with files you want to archive.
      2. Set the archive tier:

        For Microsoft Azure: Change the Default access tier to Archive.
        For AWS: Change the Default storage class to S3 Glacier.

      All files meeting the data replication policy will be replicated to the archive tier by default after you save your configuration.

      By using the archive tier as a direct target, you do not spend money storing data in hot and cool tiers and you still have a backup of your data to be used in the event of a disaster. This is ideal for industries such as surveillance where compliancy requirements are high. However, the data is not immediately available, and retrieval is costly and delayed.

      Reclaiming Space

       Once your files are archived, you do not need to keep them on your local storage. If you want the space to be reclaimed automatically, you can set a Reclaim policy, or do it manually instead: 

      1. Select the files you wish to reclaim and right-click. 
        Go to the Tiger Bridge menu and choose Reclaim Space.



        All files moved to the archive tier become inaccessible and you cannot open them directly. They appear as missing as they are not immediately available for use:




      2.  If you need to get any file back from the Archive tier, right-click on it, go to the Tiger Bridge menu, and select Rehydrate from Archive. 



        A confirmation message will pop up and, if you confirm it, the request will be sent to the cloud.
      • For Microsoft Azure: You will have to wait for about 15 minutes for the file to come back. If needed, you can change the access tier from the cloud portal.
        Once the file is retrieved, you will be able to open it.
      •  For AWS: You will have to wait for about 2 minutes for the file to come back.
        Amazon S3 restores a temporary copy of the file, kept for a short period of time, after which it is deleted. The original file remains in the S3 Glacier storage class. If needed, you can change the storage class from the cloud portal. Once the file is retrieved, you will be able to open it. 

      NOTE!

      If you do not want to retrieve every single file manually, there is a setting in the registry that can change Tiger Bridge’s behavior and you could retrieve files simply by double-clicking on them. This is not set by default as retrieving data from the archive tier incurs additional charges.

      View our Data Archiving video playlist here.

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      About Tiger Technology

      Founded in 2003 and headquartered in Sofia, Bulgaria and Alpharetta, GA, USA, Tiger Technology specializes in the underlying technology of hybrid cloud workflows as well as data management software solutions designed to help customers of any size, scale and industry optimize their on-premises storage and enhance their workflows through cloud services. Tiger Technology solutions are admin-friendly, non-disruptive, transparent, and highly cost-effective.

      Tiger Technology brings over 15 years of expertise in developing high-performance storage solutions for the most demanding workflows, which includes cross-platform NAS/SAN file system sharing, storage, user, project, and media management.

      Throughout the years and the multitude of changes in IT and the digital landscape, Tiger Technology has chosen the path of growth and continual improvement, but it has never lost sight of what it all starts with - data. The company’s current focus is bridging the gap between the edge where data is generated and the cloud where data is stored and processed.

       

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