Long-term storage—archiving—requires a very different approach than backup and recovery where throughput and deduplication are the main concerns. Archiving calls for storing data for long periods without becoming corrupted, so when it is retrieved, it is exactly what got stored 10 or 20 years ago.
For most organizations that reach a certain size, standardized linear tape open (LTO) magnetic tape is the best choice. But for those that cannot justify the cost or believe tape is a thing of the past, there are three viable alternatives: object storage in the cloud, on-premises disk storage, and optical media.
