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NLS: Taming the Sea of Information

Less frequently accessed (though still critical) data is the byproduct of months to years of customer relationship management, billing, marketing, content management, and other business applications that populate a BW system. Recently, state and federal government regulations have forced many enterprises to retain this data from several years to forever. Brokerage houses, financial institutions, public utilities, healthcare providers, and pharmaceutical firms are particularly susceptible to these mandated data retention rules. The end result is a swell of information that must be stored to support potential legal compliance inquiries and pivotal business decision-making.

BW business and technical professionals must determine a cost-effective way to retain essential data and still provide easy access to it. While managing large databases, they must also maintain high BW performance and create rules that govern which data should be kept instantly, as opposed to readily, available.

NLS was created to address these needs. To keep storage costs down, NLS systems use alternative storage media (for example, optical, tape, or IDE [Integrated Drive Electronics] hard disk) rather than nanosecond-speed DASD (Direct Access Storage Device) devices. (See the Figure below.) Unlike hierarchical storage management (HSM) systems, NLS systems do not support off-line archiving or the unloading of media from storage devices to shelf. Although NLS systems have been deployed for many years, they are gaining more recognition now that the amount of data to be retained is growing rapidly.

Figure A simple NLS system architecture

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