When storing data for long-term digital preservation, there are several key issues to resolve.
The first issue is the challenge to manage increasing data volume. With the broad adoption of IoT, AI, and the evolution of video image resolution, we are now facing an ongoing data explosion across many industries around the world.
The second issue is the legal requirement to archive data for required retention periods. Industry-specific laws and regulations set the record retention periods depending on the type of data, sometimes requiring data to be stored for an extended number of years. While this data is archived it must also be protected against malware and ransomware, data manipulation and/or other data breaches where data could be lost.
The third issue is the cost and effort required to maintain the archive data.
When we archive data, system upgrades and migration may be required.
Migrations for hard disk drives can be required every three-to-five years and magnetic tape may require migration every seven-to-ten years.
Upgrades and migration are costly, and extensive amounts of labor are required to perform these tasks.
Temperature-controlled environments and energy requirements also need to be considered for archive storage solutions.
A better solution would be the one that does not require periodic migration and strict environmental controls for the storage of media to optimize the cost of maintaining the archive.
These are the issues we face when archiving large volumes of data for the long term.
Sony would like to introduce the Optical Disc Archive Solution, also known as ODA, focusing on three main features.
Capacity
Through a long history of developing ODA technology, Sony has achieved a dramatic increase in data recording capacity and gained a strong reputation in the market for reliability.
Every time this technology advances another generation, we obtain increased storage capacity and faster data transfer rates.
With Generation 3, we have achieved 5.5 terabytes of capacity and transfer rates that can exceed hard disk drive speeds.
Data that is accessed frequently is called hot or warm data. High-speed media is required, such as flash memory and hard disk drives, to provide the necessary computational storage performance.
Data that is accessed infrequently is called cold data. Media that can manage high data volume over a long period of time is required. ODA is recommended for a cold archive, thanks to its high capacity and random-access capability for diverse data sets.
Robustness
The ODA system can be utilized in many different environments, from small offices to large data centers.
ODA media is water resistant and durable enough to protect data from disasters such as a flood, a building's loss of power, or a burst pipe.
A simulation of flood damage can be demonstrated.
First an optical disc archive cartridge with video footage is submerged in water.
The disc is taken out of the water and rinsed.
The disc is dried and put into a new cartridge shell.
The cartridge is then inserted into the ODA standalone drive.
A laptop that has the supplied Content Manager software loaded on it displays the cartridge video footage successfully.
Long-Term Data Integrity
ODA takes data integrity and data longevity to the next level when compared to magnetic media.
With ODA as a solution, a customer's data is securely encoded onto non-magnetic immutable Archival Disc optical media that cannot be altered accidentally, maliciously, or through environmental conditions.
And ODA media has an estimated archival life of 100 years, based on internal testing.
Unlike comparable systems, which incur huge data migration costs every few years, the ODA virtually eliminates the need for data migration because it retains compatibility throughout generations. Sony's ODA provides long-term storage solutions with a low cost of ownership.