IIIF automated backup and redirects

[pmwrdeletemenot]

I am making (and have nearly finished) a digital resource with around 30,000 images of manuscript and incunable pages, all in IIIIF. We run our own IIIF server, on a university system. However, most of our images come from other instituions, with around a third coming from just one institution: the British Library. You can see where this is heading. Last October the BL suffered a massive cyber-attack and all their digital images, IIIF and non-IIIF, disappeared, and are only now beginning to be re-appear. While this case is the most dramatic, it is not unique. On any given day, one of the twenty or so other IIIIF servers on which we rely might be experiencing problems.

So, my question: is there some mechanism by which IIIF repositories can link to and support each other, through some kind of automated shared back-up and redirect mechanism, so that if one server is down another will seamlessly take up its requests? If there is such a system already, that would be wonderful. If not .. it seems to me that this is something we really need.

I have also posted this message to the SLACK general channel. Pardon my unfamiliarity with this group and how it works.

Peter Robinson (forced to use this strange pmwr email as for some reason IIIF-discuss would not accept any of my normal emails etc. Thanks to Caitlin for sorting this out.)