Nuts and Bolts at the ADS.
Tony Austin,
ADS Systems Manager
Are you the kind of user who actually wonders what kind of machinery is used to magic up all the ADS data to your desktop? If so, read on as our systems manager gives another instalment of his occasional series on the hi-tech nitty-gritty at the ADS.
The Arts and Humanities Data Service (AHDS) provided off site data storage to various data centres including the ADS. Following the unfortunate demise of the AHDS (see previous issues and the Director's Foreword) the ADS needed to locate a new off site deep storage facility. Following negotiations with the UK Data Archive (UKDA) based at the University of Essex the ADS now has a dedicated 3.3 TB server hosted in Essex. The UKDA provide support including regular tape backup. An initial agreement is for a three year period with options to renew.
Data is regularly synchronised from local storage in York to the remote server in Essex using SSH (Secure Shell) tunnelling which employs sophisticated encryption during the transfer. Synchronisation software is then used to compare source and destination copies to ensure the success of a transfer. The existence of identical copies of ADS data in geographically remote locations should allow efficient recovery from all but the most extreme of disasters!
