This IS the Avid L2: [Avid-L2] Re: OT:archive family movies

Sunday, April 21, 2013

[Avid-L2] Re: OT:archive family movies

For mission-critical cloud storage, without the necessity of immediate access or restoration, you might consider Amazon AWS Glacier which is only $0.01 per GB, per month.

Another way of looking at it is $1.00 per 100 GB, per month. Or $10.00 per TB, per month. That's for highly-redundant, enterprise-level storage -- not some crappy consumer product with myriad security issues. And, Amazon has historically lowered their AWS pricing year-after-year -- as opposed to raising it.

My approach, not that anyone has asked, is a modified version of the "3-2-1 Backup Rule". At least 3 copies of data, using at least 2 types of media -- and with 1 of those copies stored offsite.

For high-availability local access, I clone important data to two (2) identical Synology 5-bay NAS boxes running RAID6 using enterprise drives. With that scenario, five drives would have to fail at the same time for me to lose that data -- which of course is possible in the case of a fire, theft or natural disaster.

For offsite storage I use Synology's built-in Amazon Glacier package, which lets me automate uploading specific files or volumes to Amazon Glacier. For the record, Synology also includes an automated Amazon S3 upload utility which is very handy for high-availability, cloud based storage -- at a slightly higher price.

For a second type of media, I archive all of the Synology data to LTO6 using Xendata6 Workstation software. Not many bells and whistles, but I have not found a less expensive LTO6 solution. The good news is that a CRC feature is finally being released shortly -- which has formerly been the Achilles heel of this product, in my view.

Then, with reckless abandon, I variably store that same data on less-dependable media; Blu-ray discs, individual Hard Drives, Flash Drives, stone tablets and 1950-era punch cards.

Between the 2 mirrored NAS boxes, the LTO6 tapes and Glacier -- I consider myself covered. Anything else is gravy.

Links:

3-2-1 Backup Rule
http://www.40tech.com/2012/06/12/follow-the-3-2-1-backup-rule-to-safeguard-your-files/

Amazon AWS Calculator
http://calculator.s3.amazonaws.com/calc5.html

Synology Glacier Package
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8hsEdzAJtE

Xenda6 Workstation Software
http://www.xendata.com/products09/XD6W.html

Finally, should you become interested in Glacier, but not want the requirement of Synology hardware, Cloudberry Labs has been acknowledged by Amazon as the best AWS S3 and Glacier software client on the market -- and includes lots of great tools like "Watch Folders" and Data Lifecycle tools:

http://www.cloudberrylab.com/amazon-s3-explorer-pro-cloudfront-IAM.aspx

--- In Avid-L2@yahoogroups.com, "Terence Curren" <tcurren@...> wrote:
>
> It's better than hard drives. Maybe BluRays? I am trying to figure out what to do with all these myself. I have far too much material for the cost of cloud storage.