Home > Storage > PowerScale (Isilon) > Industry Solutions and Verticals > Electronic Design Automation > PowerScale: Best Practices for Semiconductor EDA Design Environments > Business Service Level Agreements (SLA)
It’s important to first understand which datasets the business (i.e., management) considers as worth protecting and for how long. Unlike finance industry, data protection and retention requirements in semiconductor are not governed by regulatory agencies. Often, this is driven by either customer contracts, or basic industry standard protection is assumed. Hence, some customers retain completed designs for 7, 10 or 15 years after final tape-out or a certain period after first production batch. Given the semiconductor storage requirements increasing exponentially with higher design densities, knowing what not to protect is critical so that data that does need protection can be adequately protected. For example, depending on the design practices employed, there may not be any need to protect the so called ‘scratch’ data. This could significantly change both architecture and budget requirements. Once you know all datasets that must be protected, Service Level Agreements (SLAs) can be reviewed to decide on retention periods, restoration time requirements, encryption, and so on. As such, the SLA itself can indicate what the business must protect.