As Aaron alludes to your decision should base off your real needs and they
might not be exclusive.

LOCKSS/MetaArchive might be worth the money if it is the community archival
aspect you are going for. Depending on your institution being a participant
might make political/mission sense regardless of the storage needs and it
could just be a specific collection that makes sense.

Glacier is a great choice if you are looking for spreading a backup across
regions. S3 similarly if you also want to benefit from CloudFront (the CDN
setup) to take load off your institutions server (you can now use
cloudfront off your own origin server as well). Depending on your bandwidth
this might be worth the money regardless of LOCKSS participation (which can
be more dark). Amazon also tends to be dropping prices over time vs raising
but as any outsource you have to plan that it might not exist in the
future. Also look more at Glacier prices in terms of checking your data for
consistency. There have been a few papers on the costs of making sure
Amazon really has the proper data depending on how often your requirements
want you to check.

Another option if you are just looking for more geo placement is finding an
institution or service provider that will colocate. There may be another
small institution that would love to shove a cheap box with hard drives on
your network in exchange for the same. Not as involved/formal as LOCKSS but
gives you something you control to satisfy your requirements. It could also
be as low tech as shipping SSDs to another institution who then runs some
bagit checksums on the drive, etc.

All of the above should be scriptable in your workflow. Just need to decide
what you really want out of it.

Eby


On Fri, Jan 11, 2013 at 11:52 AM, Aaron Trehub <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Hello Josh,
>
> Auburn University is a member of two Private LOCKSS Networks: the
> MetaArchive Cooperative and the Alabama Digital Preservation Network
> (ADPNet).  Here's a link to a recent conference paper that describes both
> networks, including their current pricing structures:
>
> http://conference.ifla.org/past/ifla78/216-trehub-en.pdf
>
> LOCKSS has worked well for us so far, in part because supporting
> community-based solutions is important to us.  As you point out, however,
> Glacier is an attractive alternative, especially for institutions that may
> be more interested in low-cost, low-throughput storage and less concerned
> about entrusting their content to a commercial outfit or having to pay
> extra to get it back out.  As with most things, you pay your money--more or
> less, depending--and make your choice.  And take your risks.
>
> Good luck with whatever solution(s) you decide on.  They need not be
> mutually exclusive.
>
> Best,
>
> Aaron
>
> Aaron Trehub
> Assistant Dean for Technology and Technical Services
> Auburn University Libraries
> 231 Mell Street, RBD Library
> Auburn, AL 36849-5606
> Phone: (334) 844-1716
> Skype: ajtrehub
> E-mail: [log in to unmask]
> URL: http://lib.auburn.edu/
>
>