Fixity Metadata and Fixity with AWS

[holly.a....@gmail.com]

Hello All,

Our team has recently implemented Archivematica (within the last year) and we are running version 1.11.2. We are just about to start testing and developing our validation workflows and I wanted to ask the group a couple of questions. I think you will find that I am a novice to these concepts, so thank you for your patience.

We are looking into using Fixity through the Archivematica Storage Service and my questions are as follows:

1. When performing these fixity checks across the AIPs in storage, does this fixity information get written/recorded in each AIP METS file as a PREMIS Event?

2. How are other institutions recording, tracking and maintaining post-ingested fixity-related metadata across their AIPs/digital holdings?

3. Would anyone happen to have any experience using a) Fixity through the Storage Service in the AWS S3 Glacier or b) The Serverless Fixity for Digital Preservation tool that the AWS platform provides in conjunction with their Archivematica-managed AIPs? 

Thank you in advance for your consideration.

Very Best,

Holly McIntyre

[Tessa Walsh]

Hello Holly,

Thanks for these questions! Very interesting and I look forward to reading the community answers. I can't speak to your second and third questions but to help answer the first one - post-ingest fixity checks via the Fixity app do not result in new PREMIS Events in the AIP METS files, but Fixity does write fixity outcome information (e.g. date, pass/fail, and error details if there are any) into the Archivematica Storage Service database for each package, where it is viewable via the Storage Service GUI.

All the best,

Tessa

[holly.a....@gmail.com]

Hi Tessa,

Thank you for your input on this. 

I hope to continue this discussion with the community and hopefully get some feedback on my other two questions.

Very Best,

Holly

[tmi...@gmail.com]

Hi Holly,

Sorry to drag up an old thread, but I was wondering if you ever got any more information with how S3 storage costs are impacted by the fixity checks? I hadn't seen the Serverless Fixity for Digital Preservation before, that does look interesting.

Thanks!

Tom

[Tessa Walsh]

Hi Tom,

Fixity checks via the Storage Service API or the Fixity application download the AIP from storage in order to validate the BagIt bags, so if your AIPs are in S3 you can expect to pay data egress/download costs. Those will differ depending on the tier of S3 being used, so your best bet might be to use the AWS pricing calculator to estimate the fees. If your Storage Service is also hosted in AWS in the same region as your S3 storage you might be able to avoid the data egress charges, but as with anything in the cloud the devil is in the details.

Hope that helps!

Tessa