Migration of meemoo archive system storage in full swing
6 Jul 2021The meemoo archive system contains a dizzying number of image and audio clips. At the end of last year, we surpassed the milestone of 16 PB of digital files – equivalent to 24 million CD-ROMs. The sustainable storage of this content is one of our core tasks, which is why we started a large-scale storage migration to increase storage capacity last summer. Find out here what steps we’ve already taken.
Why we’re doing this
Fortunately, we don’t need to rely on CD-ROMs to store all the content in our archive system. We prefer to use a sustainable tape infrastructure that is suitable for large volumes of archive content. Until recently, we opted for LTO6 tapes with a storage capacity of 2.5 TB each, but we’re now in the process of switching to LTO8 tapes for content partners that require larger storage capacities. The advantage of this is that the latter’s capacity is up to five times bigger.
Not only does this mean we can increase our storage capacity in line with our storage needs; it also allows us to check the integrity of archive files at the same time. We are reading the content on each tape before writing it to a new tape. And if there are any faults with a file, we can use one of the three copies that we always keep safe in reserve to restore it.
How much have we done already?
Following a period of intensive preparation, we started migrating the regional broadcasters’ archived materials and have already finished moving all the content from Focus-WTV, TV Oost, TV Limburg and BRUZZ. Now we’re focusing on the content from ROB-tv.
What’s next? Migrating the content from RINGtv, RTV, AVS and ATV. Later this year, it will be the turn of the public broadcaster’s archive content. And once that’s complete, in 2022 we can get started with our other content partners. We’re combining all this with switching to a new file format.
LTO6 tapes still in circulation
Original LTO6 tapes are not yet a thing of the past; they’re still the most efficient solution for organisations with modest growth. After all, it takes much longer to fill an LTO8 tape (with storage capacity of up to 12 TB), and it makes little sense to store largely empty tapes at our offline storage bunker where we periodically send copies. We have therefore opted to continue using LTO6 for these cases, although we are converting the files into the new format.