Imperial War Museums Digitally Preserve the History Of

Imperial War Museums digitally preserve the history of

of preserving Imperial War Museums’ substantial digital archive, there

Spectra met all of our requirements and then some, and now continues to deliver with StorCycle’s storage lifecycle management capabilities. Spectra StorCycle, BlackPearl and T950 tape library

The Challenge

and photographs that must be preserved forever but won’t last on their original media. They currently store an archive of around 750,000 digital assets, which

which is scanned and digitized from donated VHS and Umatic tapes (nitrate and About the UK Imperial War Museums collection of 100,000 audio masters dating back to the 1930s, nearly 500,000 IWM (Imperial War Museums) tells the image masters and thousands of lower resolution versions (access versions

story of people who have lived, fought collection generate an additional 10TB of data per month, and the videotape scanning project is expected to create another 900TB over four years. the Commonwealth since the First World When it came to preserving their content, Imperial War Museums (IWM) had been

million visitors each year and house a would not only satisfy their organization’s needs, but offer an investment that collection of over 10 million objects. The could be leveraged into the future as their archive and data storage needs grew. branches are IWM London, which will open extensive new Second World War and The Holocaust Galleries in October 2021; IWM North, housed in an iconic award-winning building designed by Daniel Libeskind; IWM Duxford, a world renowned aviation museum and Britain’s

War Rooms, housed in Churchill’s secret headquarters below Whitehall; and the Second World War cruiser HMS Belfast. A British munitions factory during World War I... from the IWM website.

Toll Free: 800-833-1132 • 303-449-6400 • 6285 Lookout Road • Boulder, CO 80301 USA www.spectralogic.com CASE STUDY: Imperial War Museums, UK

Imperial War Museums Storage Workflow Diagram

Environment Snapshot BlackPearlConverged Storage System, standard shared folders on the Spectra BlackPearl Object Storage Disk and NAS. The NAS solution offers a very dense • Spectra StorCycle® Storage Lifecycle Management Software BlackPearl NAS solution. capability of drives so there’s plenty of opportunity for expansion. • Spectra BlackPearl® Converged They run two primary workflows in this Storage System environment. The first are the master film All of their files are backed up to tape. The scans, which comprise the bulk of their primary backup uses the BlackPearl and • Spectra BlackPearl® Object Storage Disk data (1.2PB). Master film scans are rarely Object Storage Disk to write data to both accessed and stored on tape via Spectra’s libraries at the same time. IWM also runs ® • Spectra BlackPearl NAS BlackPearl, a modern object storage a secondary backup with BackupExec, • BlackPearl® Eon Browser solution that moves data into multiple which sends master film data to a partition • Spectra® T950 with LTO-7tape drives storage targets based on pre-set policies in the LTO-7 library. • Spectra® T950 with IBM® TS1150 tape and can replicate remotely or locally to Recently, IWM decided to leverage their drives other BlackPearl systems. Per IWM’s investment in the Spectra hardware that policies, two copies of the scan data are • Veritas BackupExec was in place for their digital asset archive stored, one to each tape library on different to help their audiovisual and exhibitions tape media. End users are able to search The Solution departments offload primary storage. They and retrieve this data using Spectra’s Eon deployed Spectra’s StorCycle, a storage The IWM’s current archive infrastructure Browser software. lifecycle management software that scans consists of two Spectra T950 Tape IWM’s second workflow stores everything and identifies inactive data outside of the Libraries, one with LTO-7 tape media and else on enterprise disk, their Spectra NAS. digital asset management applications and ® drives, and one with IBM TS1150 tape Audio masters, image masters and access moves it to a Perpetual Tier of storage. media and drives, along with a Spectra versions are simply shared with users on

Toll Free: 800-833-1132 • 303-449-6400 • 6285 Lookout Road • Boulder, CO 80301 USA www.spectralogic.com CASE STUDY: Imperial War Museums, UK

StorCycle will scan these departments’ primary storage for specific attributes, in Spectra’s StorCycle storage lifecycle man- this case identifying media file types older agement software empowered us to move our than two years and with more than 1GB in data into reliable long-term storage, offloading our size. StorCycle then moves these files primary storage and preserving media files and automatically to tape via BlackPearl, offloading primary storage and saving unstructured data all with the push of a button. space and money. Rob Tyler, IT Infrastructure Manager (DAMS), Imperial War Museums Spectra’s complete solution offers IWM the capacity, reliability and product longevity they sought for an extremely affordable price, and is backed by Spectra’s efficient, award-winning support services. storage disk, network-attached storage organizations to confidently store exabytes and object storage tape. Users can of digital assets forever for pennies per Why Spectra? manually archive project-based directories gigabyte. • Reliability and make additional copies for data Spectra Enterprise Tape Libraries – • Ease of Use protection. Providing seamless, familiar Spectra enterprise tape libraries are • Exceptional Support access and recovery of single files or entire designed for growth, as they accomodate projects, StorCycle enables organizations to • Tape’s Capacity and Scalability the storage requirements of organizations manage, share and preserve their data for • Product Longevity in every state of their lifecycle. When unparalleled long-term protection data growth requires more slots than • Effortless data migration, access and and access. preservation with StorCycle the library’s current capacity, Spectra Spectra BlackPearl Converged Storage transfers the components of the existing • Cost-effectiveness System – BlackPearl solves the problem library and puts them in a larger chassis. Solution Recap of costly and complex approaches to As data needs expand, all that changes is digital preservation by combining multiple the outgrown frame. Spectra StorCycle Storage Lifecycle standard interfaces and storage targets into Management Software – StorCycle is a a simple and affordable solution designed storage lifecycle management software for diverse workflows. It allows content to that automatically identifies and moves move seamlessly into online/nearline disk, inactive data from primary storage to a tape, and private and public cloud storage lower cost tier that includes cloud, object in a way not previously possible. Designed for growth, the purpose-built system breaks away from traditional and legacy solutions that are based on licensing models, enabling

Toll Free: 800-833-1132 • 303-449-6400 • 6285 Lookout Road • Boulder, CO 80301 USA www.spectralogic.com