Data saving and analysis

With our needs for the coming years in mind, we have over the last year bought extensive networked storage media (SAN). The first use for this storage area has been the centralization of backups, implementing our Backup Policy, giving us two weeks worth of copies of the staff data, plus periodical backups for every important service (databases, software for the instrument computers, web server - providing also a secondary web server).

The oldest of our data archive, mainly on CDs/DVDs, are getting old and it has been demonstrated that those media degrade. This has been noted before and we will start moving the historical archive into the storage area over the next few months. This will allow us to do a number of things with the data: re-storing it on more modern, bigger storage, like Blu-ray; but also will serve as a "live" archive, letting us reprocess data at will and making it easier to access the data that has become public.