Removable Media Storage

[Matthew Gettemy]

Hi,

I would like to use Archivematica to send/store data on LTO 7 tapes. Obviously this data would not be available for download through the webpage, but I would like to be able to search for the associated metadata and have the storage tab return some information about the physical location of the tapes. I found this former post and answer, but I'm not clear on how to accomplish this:

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From a storage aspect, how could a tape/removable library be accounted for.  From the storage service, it looks like you can provide pipelines to link archives to an online storage only.  If one were to produce data of a size that its cost-prohibitive to keep all the data of an archive active on say a on large NAS 100TB, how can you accomodate a mix - where part of the archive is stored on the 100TB NAS and additional data is kept on in a tape library.  Would this abstraction of the Hot/Cold storage need to be thought with a different set of software?

 Short answer is that there is no automated way to do this in Archivematica yet, but that doesn't mean we're not open to further development if it were funded. However, the workflow for using tape/removable storage is very similar to what we are doing for storage in LOCKSS in the upcoming 1.2 Archivematica / Storage Service 0.4.0 releases. (See https://www.archivematica.org/wiki/Development_roadmap:_Archivematica#Storage_Service_0.4.0 AND https://www.archivematica.org/wiki/LOCKSS_Integration) This workflow uses the AIP pointer file to manage the offline storage information. The user would process the AIP via Archivematica, store locally online via the Storage Service, manually edit the pointer file in an XML editor to indicate offsite storage, then once the offsite storage had been confirmed, delete the local copy of the AIP. The pointer file remains accessible via the Storage Service with information about where the AIP is stored 'offline'. The ElasticSearch index is also still searchable via the dashboard, but you would not be able to access/download the AIP without retrieving it manually from offline storage.

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At what point in the process would you edit the pointer file? I clicked on the "Pointer File" link for a lot of the AIPs in my archival storage tab and they all say the resource does not have a pointer file.

Matthew

[Sarah Romkey]

Hi Matthew,

Really sorry about the lengthy delay in replying- I had a draft written for a long time and am just coming back around to it!

I'm not aware of anyone actually doing this workflow, so I'd consider it "experimental" at this stage- has anyone in the community given it a try?

The pointer file is created in the Prepare AIP micro-service, and placed by default in /var/archivematica, so you'd be looking to edit it after you have placed your AIP in storage.

Do you by chance create uncompressed AIPs? If so, this explains the lack of pointer files. Currently Archivematica implements PREMIS 2.2 which is how the pointer file "points" to the zipped package, e.g. the AIP. In the future if we implement PREMIS 3, we could "point" to directories as well, but for the time being pointer files are limited to compressed AIPs only.

Hope this helps,

Cheers,

Sarah

Sarah Romkey, MAS,MLIS

Archivematica Program Manager
Artefactual Systems
604-527-2056

@archivematica / @accesstomemory

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