Storage - conclusions and future

It is good to see storage is now being addressed seriously within the repository community. Preserv has worked directly with Sun, EPrints and others to provide abstracted storage layers in repository software. Team members from Preserv continue to be closely involved in the production of specifications for both abstracted storage layers as well as the storage products themselves. Through a working group established by Sun Microsystems there is now a push for better object-orientated storage products (also known as Content Addressable Storage (CAS), and Content Searchable Storage (CSS), and Combined Data/Metadata storage formats).

We envisage more repositories will wish to make use of the greater variety of storage platforms now available to suit the needs of the repository more flexibly while the repository software and administrative team remain in control.

The future

• Soon: Repository storage controllers, able to handle migration between storage platforms as well as initial setup.
• A greater variety of object-orientated archiving storage products.
• Cloud based, distributed, single stored, multiple-use repository objects - a single global repository with many points of ingest and subset control.