Digital Storage in the Cloud Amazon Web Services

Digital Storage in the Cloud: Amazon Web Services & DSpace Barry Davis - Coordinator of Multimedia & Digital Production Services Kevin Gilbertson - Web Services Librarian Z. Smith Reynolds Library, Wake Forest University

Amazon Web Services (AWS) http: //aws. amazon. com/ • • Amazon's flexible web service platform Pay as you go services Choose which services are suited to your needs Reliable

AWS Pricing

AWS @ ZSR Amazon Elastic Cloud Computing (Amazon EC 2): • Host Library Website, Blogs, Wikis, Online Catalog (Vu. Find), Online Repository (DSpace) and other services on EC 2 • Quickly create and configure new servers in case of failure • Easy to additional disk space to server • Library has complete control Amazon Elastic Block Storage (Amazon EBS): • Creates volumes to attach to our EC 2 servers. • Volumes can be a variety of sizes and can be moved from instance to instance. Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S 3): • Used for server backups • Tested for use with Library Faculty/Staff file sharing and storage

Wake. Space - A Digital Archive http: //wakespace. lib. wfu. edu/jspui/ • Built on open source DSpace platform • Currently houses 132 GB of data on a 200 GB partition • Includes PDF documents, image files, audio files, and video files.

Wake. Space uses • Used as a storage location for other sites o http: //www. digitalforsyth. org/ o http: //cloud. lib. wfu. edu/blog/ammons/videos/ • ETD Repository • Institutional Repository • Online storage and discovery of digitized materials such as Special Collections and Archives materials or special events

Advantages of DSpace on Amazon • Ability to scale storage easily: Create new EC 2 volumes and add them to DSpace's configuration or resize current volume to large size when needed. This reduces overhead as you pay for what you need as you need it. • No hardware concerns: No physical drives to manage, Amazon platform to rely on. • Control: The library has complete access and control over our system.

Disadvantages of DSpace on Amazon • Loss of control: Your material is not local, therefore there is a very small risk of data loss. • Not right for everyone: In our case, we took on all server duties, which requires much more work than allowing an IT body to handle everything.

Contact Us! Email: gilberkm@wfu. edu davijb@wfu. edu