NDSA:Open Ended Large Scale Storage Questions
Questions for Member Institution Implementations of Large Scale Storage Architectures
- What is the particular preservation goal or challenge you need to accomplish? (for example, re-use, public access, internal access, legal mandate, etc.)
- What large scale storage or cloud technologies are you using to meet that challenge? Further, why did you choose these particular technologies?
- Specifically, what kind of materials are you preserving (text, data sets, images, moving images, web pages, etc.)
- How big is your collection? (In terms of number of objects and storage space required)
- What are your performance requirements? Further, why are these your particular requirements?
- What storage media have you elected to use? (Disk, Tape, etc) Further, why did you choose these particular media?
- What do you think the key advantages of the system you use?
- What do you think are the key problems or disadvantages your system present?
- What important principles informed your decision about the particular tool or service you chose to use?
- How frequently do you migrate from one system to another? Further, what is it that prompts you to make these migrations?
- What characteristics of the storage system(s) you use do you feel are particularly well-suited to long-term digital preservation? (High levels of redundancy/resiliency, internal checksumming capabilities, automated tape refresh, etc)
- What functionality or processes have you developed to augment your storage systems in order to meet preservation goals? (Periodic checksum validation, limited human access or novel use of permissions schemes)
- Are there tough requirements for digital preservation, e.g. TRAC certification, that you wish were more readily handled by your storage system?