Oracle recently released an update to its ZFS Storage Appliance adding file retention policies to the system. This is the third type of retention available on the appliance, after object retention and ZFS snapshot retention.
File retention is especially important to corporations trying to comply with certain regulations regarding electronic storage requirements from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), and the European Union’s Commission Delegated Regulation.
A report released by Cohasset Associates details their opinion that the Oracle ZFS Storage Appliance is compliant with these regulations when using the appliance’s file retention policies.
You can download Cohasset’s Compliance Assessment report here.
What do we mean when we talk about file retention? Simply put, a retained file is one that cannot be modified or removed from the system by any means. This has been especially important for companies in the financial sector, where records must be kept for periods of years. It’s especially important that the customer show that measures have been taken to ensure that the records retrieved from a storage appliance be what was originally written.
The Oracle ZFS Storage Appliance has two levels of file retention, mandatory and privileged. With mandatory retention, every file written to a ZFS share is automatically locked down, unable to be deleted, edited, or overwritten for a defined period of time, even with the most privileged administrative access. Privileged retention is suitable for legal holds and other situations where deletion or modification of a file must be prevented for an unknown period of time. The restrictions can be removed at any time by an administrative user with the proper authorizations. (My colleague Bryan Grenn has a great blog about Oracle databases and backups, and has two great posts, one on using file retention locks and another on file retention authorizations.)
By using ZFS Snapshot Retention for ransomware protection and File Retention for legal holds and regulatory compliance, the Oracle ZFS Storage Appliance is central to a secure data protection strategy.
