How long do you expect to keep a piece of data in any of your databases? Chances are if you're like me, you rarely think about it and expect that you need to store all the data perpetually. As long as you have a job, and the database is being used by some system, you keep the data.

Over time that becomes a problem. Some companies are starting to examine the legal issues of old data, mostly emails, but potentially other records, and digitally shredding or removing that data over time. For others there are the problems of storage, with the raw space needed to keep all this data growing faster than hardware budgets. More and more companies are looking to archive data that is less used to ease the stress on their storage and backup systems.

Read the rest of "Keep Data Forever" at SQLServerCentral.