Your servers are where all your data sits. Whether you’ve purchased server space from data hosting providers, or your IT department owns a farm of servers, you should be aware of how much data you’re storing and using. You’ll want to make sure none of the money invested in this data storage is misused or wasted. The best place to start? By reducing and eliminating data redundancy.

What is Data Redundancy?

Data redundancy is having the same set of data stored in two or more places. Now, that might not seem like too big a deal when we have terabytes of storage space available on our laptops – and even more on our servers. But, think on a larger scale. Big businesses that already have huge amounts of data could have that data replicated more than once on their servers and could include enormous video, photo and website data files.

As time goes by and the data redundancy increases, it can actually eat up a huge chunk of your server’s storage capacity. It can also slow your data retrieval times and directly affect your business’ overall performance.

Another reason you should watch out for data redundancy is that having the same data stored in several places could result in confusion as to which data should be accessed or updated. Needless to say, you could end up with corrupt reports or analytics at the end of the day.

How to Avoid Data Redundancy

It should be noted that some businesses choose to replicate their data intentionally as a form of back up or data security. Although this isn’t an advisable way of ensuring you don’t lose your data, if it works for you and you have the resources to see it through, well and good. Otherwise, here’s what you should be doing to avoid data redundancy.

1. Design your database carefully.

If you have in-house applications developed that read from databases, you can easily monitor their architecture and design right from the outset. Having relational databases means that, as long as you have common fields, you will be able to link up tables and match records. As you lay out the plans for your applications, keep an eye on every single field to monitor any repetition. If a field is in one table, you don’t need it to be anywhere else.

2. Delete unused data.

Another reason data can be replicated on your server is if you keep it even when you no longer have use for it. For instance, if you move on to a new database (perhaps you’ve added a new column or field), but forget to delete the old database, you will have it sitting there doing absolutely nothing but eating up disk space.

Always delete any databases that you are no longer using.

What To Do in Case You Already Have Data Redundancy

No matter how hard you try, you will sometimes overlook a table, a program or application that creates and stores redundant data. In that case, you will need to move on to clearing mode.

1. Conduct regular checks.

Make it a part of your routine to go into the bowels of your code, data and databases. You know which of your data is highly transactional and stands the risk of being created and recreated over and over again. Focus on code and tables that store that code. Run a check on them regularly to see if any copies of data exist.

2. Correct data replicators.

If, after numerous cleaning attempts, you still have data that is being replicated, then it’s time to have a look at your programs and applications. While this might be a little difficult when it comes to third-party applications you have running, you can easily ask your in-house IT team to take apart and look into your code.

Get rid of any programs that create duplicate data. You might need to re-draw your software architecture, but it will be time and effort well spent. Also, keep an eye out for applications that require the duplication of data. If you can, fix all your code to always point to just one table or source of data.

Finally, Be Careful

Although you need to remove as much redundant data as you can, you should always be careful when deleting. Always make sure no program or application is using the tables or data before you proceed to delete them. Keeping backups of the data (yes, the duplicate data included) always makes perfect sense in case you need to bring it all back to the way it was.