The steadily increasing digitization in all areas of society leads to an ever increasing variety of IT solutions and IT uses. This goes hand in hand with the increasing consumption of energy and resources for the production and use of these technologies. Under the name “Green IT”, the industry has been campaigning for the environment and resource-saving use of computers for a number of years. Low power consumption, easily degradable materials, optimized everyday use and environmentally friendly disposal are the basic pillars of the concept.
When it comes to reducing energy consumption during use, many think of avoiding standby phases. What hardly anyone thinks about:
The mountain of data garbage consumes as much electricity as a metropolis
Companies generate, collect and store an ever-increasing amount of data in many different systems. The storage provider Veritas found in a benchmark report in 2020 that the amount of data is increasing by 39% per year. Since storage is (still) so cheap and nobody has an overview of the content of the data, no data is deleted. But the mountains of data are real power guzzlers: According to a current analysis by the Borderstep Institute, the 50.000 data centers in Germany consumed 2020 billion kWh of electricity in 16. That is more than the city of Berlin in a year. The trend is rising sharply.
If you consider that 52% of all data now has to be counted as dark data (stored but not further used data), it becomes clear: If the useless data were deleted, about 25.000 fewer data centers would be needed in Germany. This could save more than half of Berlin's annual electricity requirement.
The digital garbage has to go
The fact that the garbage data has to go is obvious in many ways. The unnecessary energy consumption is massive, the superfluous data blocks the employees from seeing the files they need, the lack of an overview of the data and authorizations increases the general security risk - and storage is also becoming a scarce commodity: the provision of storage capacity will become a problem by 2025. The IDC study on the "Forecast for Global Data Growth by 2025" predicts that from 2019 to 2025 a total of around 21,9 zettabytes will be shipped worldwide - however, there is a demand of 135 zettabytes.
Unfortunately, deleting unnecessary data is not that easy. The information necessary for a safe and consistent tidying up is usually missing. The majority of the existing data was usually saved without meta information such as a classification. That is, they are unstructured or, at best, semi-structured and there is no reliable information about the content and value of the data. This increases the effort involved in cleaning up to unrealistic heights, as each individual file would have to be checked in order to separate business-critical data from superfluous data.
In just XNUMX steps: migRaven.24/7 cleans up unnecessary data
With migRaven.24/7 we have developed a solution that rethinks data management. It ensures efficient, pleasant and safe use of the file server. By separating and possibly deleting outdated data, it contributes to a better energy balance and sustainability in IT.
With "Data Retention" ensures that obsolete data disappear from the user's field of vision and can be deleted. Together with the consistent revision of all access rights according to Microsoft Best Practices, Data Retention implements a holistic clean-up process of the file server and AD structures. Employees can also independently initiate clean-up processes or mark areas that are to be automatically kept clean via a retention policy.
With the feature "Folder Self Service" With the help of defined templates, users independently create directories for their teams and projects and provide them with clearly defined access rights and an optional expiration date. After that, they don't have to worry about anything. After the set period has expired, access to the data is automatically blocked or the directory and its contents are deleted again.
More information in the whitepaper
In the whitepaper "5 points for successful data management" we show you how you can regain control of your important data despite the enormous amount of data and how to free yourself from data garbage. The best practices aim at, among other things
- Why you should start with data management now.
- How to find relevant data and separate it from obsolete data.
- Why the involvement of the specialist departments is crucial for success.
- Which tools and techniques support you in the automated cleaning up of your mountains of data.
Here it goes to the download.
