Life Cycle Management

All through the stages of a life cycle of a particular system, there is a huge flow of information or data from one end to the other. This data is an important entity for the processing of each stage. The same data could be the output of one stage, and the input for another stage. If for a certain reason the data for the input stage is not available, its output can not be generated. This can ultimately lead to the total system failure. That's why data life cycle management is so important.

Data Life Cycle Management (DLM) or Information Life Cycle Management (ILM) is a management system that works to manage the data. It can be defined as the process of managing critical data all through its life cycle, from conception until disposal. The data is managed across different storage media within the constraints of a business process. It is a policy based approach to manage the flow of data in the information system across various storage points which contain data objects.

This is an automated management system that organizes data into separate tiers under the policy and automates the flow of data from one tier to another, based on certain criteria. Data that moves and is accessed most frequently is stored faster and on more expensive storage mediums whereas the data that is hardly accessed is stored on cheaper and slower storage mediums.

Hierarchical storage management is a type of data life cycle management that has a number of storage mediums arranged in a hierarchy. Each type of storage media contains a different speed and cost of access. At the early stages the administrator keeps an account of both types of files that are frequently accessed and not accessed. After the survey is completed the software system is configured to take care of this automatically. This means data is provided as and when required. The availability of data is calculated on the basis of length of time elapsed.

DLM is similar to ILM. However DLM generally focuses upon basic attributes of a file such as type, size and age while ILM takes care of more complex aspects like searching a file based on a customer number. Also, both DLM and ILM, route the data to resources according to appropriate levels of performance, protection, availability and cost.

DLM is not a product but a comprehensive data lifecycle approach to manage the flow of data in an organization. This involves a combination of procedures, practices and applications.

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