Exit Strategies and Techniques for Cloud-based Preservation Services

Exit Strategies and Techniques for Cloud-based Preservation Services. Matthew Addis. iPres 2016. (Proceedings p. 276-7/ PDF p. 139).

   This poster discusses the need for an exit strategy for when organisations that use cloud-based preservation services, and understanding what is involved in migrating to or from a cloud-hosted service. It specifically looks at Arkivum and Archivematica. Some of the topics include Contractual agreements, data escrow, open source software licensing, use of independent third-party providers, and tested processes and procedures in order to mitigate risks. The top two issues are

1. the need for an exit strategy when using a cloud preservation service, and
2. the need to establish trust and perform checks on the quality of the service

It mentions that “full support for migrating between preservation environments has yet to be implemented in a production preservation service.” The approach used in the poster includes:

• Data escrow
• Log files of the software versions and updates
• Ability to export database and configuration
• Ability to test a migration

 It is important to remember in a migration test that “production pipelines may contain substantial amounts of data and hence doing actual migration tests of the whole service on a regular basis will typically not be practical”.  “Hosted preservation services offer many benefits but their adoption can be hampered by concerns over vendor lock-in and inability to migrate away from the service, i.e. lack of exit-plan.“   

Digital Preservation Matters.