Cloud Archive Tier for Long-Term Compliance

Archive tiers represent a fundamental shift in how organizations approach long-term data storage for compliance. These specialized storage classes offer cost-effective solutions for data that must be retained for years but rarely accessed. Organizations must balance accessibility requirements with cost optimization while maintaining strict compliance standards across multiple jurisdictions.

Archive tiers can help solve this dilemma by providing purpose-built storage for regulated data that demands long-term retention. Unlike traditional backup solutions focused on rapid recovery, archive tiers optimize for compliance requirements, audit readiness, and predictable costs over extended timeframes.

Cloud archive tiers serve as specialized storage classes designed for data that organizations must retain for compliance but seldom access. These tiers store regulated information for extended periods – often years or decades – at significantly reduced costs compared to standard storage options. Archive tiers typically require minimum retention periods of 180 days and involve retrieval times measured in hours rather than milliseconds.

The distinction between archive tiers and active storage lies in their optimization strategies. Active storage prioritizes immediate accessibility and high-performance operations; archive tiers focus on compliance efficiency and cost reduction. Organizations pay substantially less per gigabyte stored but accept longer retrieval times when data access becomes necessary. This trade-off makes archive tiers ideal for regulatory compliance rather than operational workloads.

Archive tiers excel in specific compliance scenarios where long-term retention takes precedence over frequent access:

• Regulatory audits: Financial institutions must retain transaction records for seven years under various regulations, accessing them only during periodic audits.
• E-discovery: Legal departments store email archives and document repositories that may be requested during litigation proceedings.
• Healthcare compliance: Medical facilities preserve patient records for decades to meet HIPAA requirements, retrieving them occasionally for continuity of care.
• Research data: Pharmaceutical companies maintain clinical trial data for regulatory submissions that occur years after study completion.

Data residency requirements add another layer of complexity to archive tier selection. Organizations operating across borders must consider where their archived data physically resides to comply with regional regulations.

GDPR mandates that EU citizen data remains within approved jurisdictions, while similar requirements exist for healthcare data under HIPAA and financial records under various national banking regulations. Archive tiers must align with these geographic restrictions while maintaining the cost benefits of long-term storage.

Air Gap Protect by Commvault creates isolated data copies separate from source environments, providing storage designed to be immutable for compliance workloads. The solution implements multi-layered zero-trust access controls that can help prevent unauthorized modifications, even if primary systems become compromised.

The platform scales across major cloud providers including AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. Organizations may be able to deploy Air Gap Protect with reduced concerns about vendor lock-in, potentially maintaining flexibility to adapt their cloud strategy over time. The solution enables both hot-tier storage for primary backup repositories and cool-tier options for secondary storage with longer retention periods, allowing organizations to optimize costs based on access patterns.

Air Gap Protect can help reduce the unpredictable expenses often associated with cloud archive storage. Traditional cloud storage models charge egress fees when organizations retrieve their data, creating budget uncertainty during audits or recovery scenarios.

Air Gap Protect is designed to eliminate these egress charges, providing transparent and predictable costs regardless of retrieval frequency. This approach particularly benefits organizations facing regular compliance audits or those planning large-scale data migrations.

Archive tiers directly address cloud security standards through built-in features that align with regulatory requirements. Compliance lock is designed to provide protection from destructive tasks such as deleting backups or reducing retention periods, helping create an immutable record that satisfies audit requirements. Encryption helps protect data both in transit and at rest, while granular access controls limit who can retrieve archived information.

Automated retention and lifecycle management help simplify compliance with frameworks like the AWS shared responsibility model. Organizations define retention policies once; the system then automatically moves data through appropriate storage tiers based on age and access patterns.

Archive tiers create defensible audit trails by maintaining logs of all data access and modifications. Every retrieval request, policy change, and administrative action generates an immutable record. This verifiable data integrity proves critical during regulatory examinations, where organizations must demonstrate not just data retention but also proper access controls and chain of custody.

Policy-driven archiving further strengthens compliance by automating classification and retention decisions. Organizations define rules based on data type, source system, and regulatory requirements; the archive tier then applies these policies consistently across all stored information. This systematic approach reduces gaps in retention that could lead to compliance violations.

Organizations implementing archive tiers for compliance should follow these practices:

1. Map regulatory requirements to retention policies: Document specific regulations affecting your data and translate them into concrete retention periods. For example financial records may require seven-year retention under SOX, while HIPAA mandates may extend to 10 years for certain medical records.
2. Implement immutability from Day One: Enable compliance lock features immediately upon deployment rather than retroactively.
3. Automate classification and tagging: Deploy automated tools to classify data based on content and apply appropriate retention tags. Manual classification introduces errors and delays that compromise compliance posture.
4. Test retrieval procedures regularly: Conduct quarterly retrieval tests to verify data integrity and measure actual recovery times. Document these tests for audit purposes and adjust tier selection based on results.
5. Monitor compliance metrics continuously: Track key indicators including data volume by tier, retention policy violations, and access attempts. Set alerts for anomalous activities that might indicate security incidents or compliance gaps.

Archive tiers fundamentally differ from conventional backup storage in their approach to cost optimization and retention duration. Traditional backup solutions optimize for rapid recovery, maintaining data in readily accessible formats for weeks or months. Archive tiers accept retrieval latencies of several hours in exchange for cost reductions over years-long retention periods.

The cost models reflect these different priorities. Backup storage charges premium rates for immediate accessibility but allows flexible retention periods. Archive tiers impose strict minimum retention requirements – 180 days for Azure Archive tier – with early deletion penalties that prorate based on remaining commitment. Organizations deleting archive data after 45 days still pay for 135 days of storage.

Compliance Alignment vs. Recovery Focus

Traditional storage serves operational recovery needs: restoring failed systems, recovering deleted files, or rolling back problematic updates. These scenarios demand speed measured in minutes. Archive tiers address compliance mandates where retrieval speed matters less than retention and immutability. An organization might wait hours to retrieve seven-year-old financial records for an audit, but those records must be unaltered.

This fundamental difference extends to how organizations manage these storage types. Backup administrators focus on recovery point objectives and test restore procedures weekly. Archive tier management emphasizes retention policy compliance and access control auditing.

The shared responsibility model with cloud providers also differs: Backup storage typically requires organizations to manage encryption keys and access controls, while archive tiers often include provider-managed compliance features.

Archive Tiers vs. Traditional Storage Comparison

The following table outlines key differences between archive tiers and traditional storage approaches.

Power Integrations, a global leader in semiconductor technologies for high-voltage power conversion, faced a significant challenge common to organizations with stringent compliance requirements. As a key player in the clean-power ecosystem, the company needed to retain growing volumes of data for increasingly longer periods while keeping storage costs manageable.

The semiconductor manufacturer discovered that its public cloud facilities for network area storage quickly became financially unsustainable as data volumes expanded.

“As a global enterprise, we have a lot of data that’s increasing over time,” says Jacob Gsoedl, CIO of Power Integrations. “With a long retention strategy, our cloud storage costs were accelerating quickly, and we couldn’t protect our data cost-effectively with the prior provider’s infrastructure.”

Sustainable Economics Through Optimized Archive Tiers

Power Integrations implemented Commvault Cloud to establish a cost-effective long-term cloud storage strategy. The solution allowed the company to use public cloud more efficiently through intelligent tiering. Instead of writing all data to expensive storage tiers like S3IA on Amazon Web Services, Power Integrations gained the flexibility to direct the bulk of its 500TB data footprint to AWS Deep Archive.

This API-based approach freed the company from appliance-based limitations, enabling optimal storage tier selection without overbuying capacity.

“Commvault Cloud gave us a way to dramatically lower our costs and keep them predictable while simultaneously providing us with the data resilience needed to keep our business running,” Gsoedl notes.

Results: Predictable Costs With Simplified Management

The implementation delivered multiple benefits aligned with the key advantages of archive tiers:

• Cost containment despite data growth: The solution remained cost-effective even as retention timeframes increased.
• Predictable economics: Storage expenses became manageable and transparent as data volumes expanded.
• Reduced operational complexity: Cloud-native deduplication and advanced intelligence helped eliminate the need for workarounds or patchwork solutions.
• Simplified administration: The user-friendly interface removed the requirement for a dedicated backup administrator.
• Environmental benefits: Highly compressed backup data helped reduce the company’s carbon footprint through decreased data center usage.

The Power Integrations case demonstrates how properly implemented archive tiers transform compliance from a cost burden into a strategic advantage. By selecting the optimal storage tiers for different data types and leveraging cloud-native capabilities, organizations can maintain long-term compliance without sacrificing budget predictability.

Commvault Cloud Air Gap Protect now extends its protection capabilities with a dedicated archive tier, designed specifically for long-term retention and compliance use cases. This new tier complements existing frequent and infrequent access options, allowing IT and compliance leaders to store data in an environment designed to be immutable and isolated.

The archive tier provides a solution across major hyperscalers, including AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. By isolating archived data and layering in guardrails for recovery and retention, organizations can confidently align with industry regulations while archived data remains accessible.

This approach enables enterprises to help maintain continuous business, can help reduce operational risk, and demonstrate audit readiness without incurring unnecessary infrastructure complexity.

Policy-Driven Compliance Management

Built-in policy engines help simplify compliance by translating regulatory requirements into automated actions. Organizations define retention rules once; Commvault then applies these consistently across all data sources and storage locations. The system generates reports documenting retention compliance, access attempts, and policy exceptions. These reports help satisfy audit requirements while providing visibility into the organization’s overall compliance posture.

Commvault’s ecosystem approach to long-term compliance extends beyond simple storage to encompass the data lifecycle. The platform integrates with existing security tools, identity management systems, and governance frameworks to create a unified compliance strategy.

Organizations leverage pre-built connectors for major cloud platforms while maintaining flexibility to adapt as regulations evolve. This approach transforms archive storage from a cost center into a strategic asset that strengthens overall cyber resilience.

Archive tiers provide a strategic foundation for long-term compliance in an increasingly regulated business environment. Organizations that implement robust archive strategies can gain both operational efficiency and strengthened security postures. The combination of storage designed for immutability, automated lifecycle management, and audit capabilities transforms compliance from a burden into a competitive advantage.

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