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4.12 Store Data According to Visitor Needs

Hosting & Infrastructure

Optimize storage of data according to what is most important, relevant, and required in service to visitors. This will help to avoid unnecessary storage of data that may not be useful or valuable, which will reduce required infrastructure, power, and data transfer.

Criteria

  • Reduce Redundancy: Remove unnecessary and redundant data from your servers, whether it is single-use (dark data) or abandoned.
  • Expiration Dates: Create data with an expiration date. Excess data is a form of technical debt, and routinely cleaning up old data needs to be normalized.
  • Classify And Tag: Use a data classification / tagging policy to make it easier to find, handle, and remove.
  • Justify Storage: Store data only when it is difficult to recreate.
  • Optimize Logging: Optimize log collection, storage (off-site), and rotation; scheduling during low-activity hours and using carbon-neutral backup providers.
  • Asset Downloads: Ensure long-term assets, especially those of a large size, are made available for download.

Impact

Low

Effort

Low

Benefits

  • Environmental:
    Reduced storage usage results in reduced storage requirements.
  • Security:
    Reduced storage of personal information reduces the risk of compromise.
  • Economic:
    Reduced storage usage will result in reduced prices.

GRI

  • materials: Low
  • energy: Low
  • water: Low
  • emissions: Low

Example

  • Code:
    Accept-Encoding: zstd, gzip, br, deflate
  • HTTP compression headers can be used to control the response.

Resources

  • AWS WAF: SUS04-BP01 – Implement a data classification policy
  • AWS WAF: SUS04-BP03 – Use policies to manage the lifecycle of your datasets
  • AWS WAF: SUS04-BP05 – Remove unneeded or redundant data
  • AWS WAF: SUS04-BP08 – Back up data only when difficult to recreate
  • Dark Data Is Leaving a Huge Carbon Footprint, And We Have to Do Something About It
  • Dark data is killing the planet – we need digital decarbonisation
  • Data Compression
  • Exploring the sustainability challenges facing digitalization and internet data centers
  • [GPFEDS] 1.6 – Strategy (Data Collection) (PDF)
  • [GPFEDS] 7.2 – Back-End (Data Retention) (PDF)
  • [GPFEDS] 8.8 – Hosting (Hot / Cold Data) (PDF)
  • [GR491] 3-7041 – Transfer Compression
  • Green by Default
  • Microsoft Azure WAF: Batch Processing
  • Microsoft Azure WAF: Only store what is relevant
  • The Cloud Is Material
  • Why data has a sustainability problem

View the Guideline

Tags

PerformanceHardwareE-WasteContentPrivacy

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More hosting & infrastructure guidelines

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4.2 Optimize Browser Caching

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4.3 Compress Your Files

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