[Pasig-discuss] Arguments for keeping an onsite copy of digitally preserved/stored digital content?

[Matthew Addis]

Hi Gail,

I think this is a case of the perennial problem of how to balance cost, risk and accessibility when storing digital assets.  As others have pointed out, cost includes budgeting issues, e.g. capex or opex, risk includes data security and sovereignty as well as risk of data corruption or loss, and access includes how quickly you can retrieve and use assets.  It’s easy to find a solution for any two out of three of these factors, but all at once is hard - low cost, low risk and fast access.

Not trusting the cloud is sensible and keeping at least one copy onsite is a practical way for many people to reduce risks and provide fast local access to their data.  But it doesn’t necessarily have to be that way.   The usual approach to managing risk of data loss is to have multiple copies of data in multiple geographic locations and not all with one vendor.  Diversity is your friend and removing vendor dependencies and lock-in is really important.   If you use multiple cloud providers or data storage facilities then it is possible to get a good balance of cost and risk without needing an onsite copy.  As the trend continues towards cloud providers building  in-territory data centres, the sovereignty issue is becoming less of a challenge, but of course can’t be eliminated in some cases where data security is paramount.

This is all a long-winded way of saying that the question isn’t necessarily one of having an onsite copy or not, it’s one of how best to address cost, risk and access - with an onsite copy being one of the more common solutions (and often a good one), but it’s not the only one that’s viable.  Indeed, in some cases where there isn’t in-house capacity to store data onsite or the capex/opex issues raise their head, then alternatives such as using multiple cloud providers can be more attractive.

BTW, as a ‘cloud provider’ we too don’t ‘trust' the cloud for all copies of the data that we store - including when we store it ourselves in our own data centres!  It might sound odd, but in some respects we don’t trust ourselves let alone any single third-party cloud provider.  Instead, we adopt a ‘rely on nothing’ type approach and we store a complete copy of our customer’s data offline with an independent escrow provider.  This is an automatic and built in part of our service and not something that a customer opts into or has to remember to do.  This gives our customers reassurance of no lock-in to us as a provider, but it also gives us our own fallback if there were ever to be issues with our own infrastructure or operations.  Some of our customers keep an onsite copy as well as archiving their data with us - but many don’t - which is because their data is being held not just by us but by an independent third-party too.

Cheers,

Matthew


Matthew Addis
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From: Pasig-discuss <pasig-discuss-bounces at asist.org<mailto:pasig-discuss-bounces at asist.org>> on behalf of "gail at trumantechnologies.com<mailto:gail at trumantechnologies.com>" <gail at trumantechnologies.com<mailto:gail at trumantechnologies.com>>
Date: Wednesday, 21 June 2017 at 20:47
To: "pasig-discuss at asis.org<mailto:pasig-discuss at asis.org>" <pasig-discuss at asis.org<mailto:pasig-discuss at asis.org>>
Subject: [Pasig-discuss] Arguments for keeping an onsite copy of digitally preserved/stored digital content?

Experts, please share your thoughts.

Are your institutions ready to "trust" the cloud for all copies of data, or is there still an argument for an onsite copy? I usually lean to keeping one onsite copy, but am I stuck in an old paradigm? From earlier PASIG thread (started by Tim) it's clear other institutions are keeping at least one copy on site.

But how do you defend this decision?

Gail





Gail Truman
Truman Technologies, LLC
Certified Digital Archives Specialist, Society of American Archivists

Protecting the world's digital heritage for future generations
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