FAQs: Active Archive Object Storage (AAOS)

A knowledge base article about FAQs: Active Archive Object Storage (AAOS) provided by the UC Berkeley IT Service Hub - Knowledge Portal

What is Active Archive Object Storage?

The Active Archive Object Storage is an on-premise object storage service that leverages Cloudian. It is designed to be 100% compatible and interoperable with the Simple Storage Service (S3) available from Amazon Web Services (AWS). Consider AAOS as a drop-in replacement for S3 when designing cloud-based storage solutions.

What are the benefits of Active Archive Object Storage over alternatives?

Lower and more predictable costs

Using cloud object storage from Amazon, Google Cloud Platform, and Microsoft Azure results in charges for transactions with your data. Common and necessary operations, including transitioning between storage tiers, retrieving data, restoring files, and deleting data "early" resulting in penalties, making it challenging to predict your monthly costs. Cloud vendors' calculators are frustrating to use, and misjudgments can be expensive.

Active Archive Object Storage is a cost-recovery model where an individual purchases the amount of capacity needed in 120TB increments, the Data Center footprint, and FTE support.

FTE support includes 24 X 7 bIT Storage administrator support and vendor software/hardware support
You are not charged for:
- Data ingress or egress fees
- API operational or a transaction fee (e.g., for using GET, PUT, or transitions)
- Tiering (i.e., there is only one tier of storage)
- As a result, Active Archive Object Storage is substantially less expensive than comparable alternatives.

Network performance and high availability

The Active Archive Object Storage is on the Campus network located in our EWH Data Center. Each node in the cluster has dual 25G nics and is behind a dedicated 100G load balancer. During network performance tests, the environment was able to provide 6GBps throughput. The configuration provides 99.999999% object durability.

Security and Compliance

Active Archive Object Storage provides the ability to encrypt all storage at rest and requires TLS when transmitting over a network. The solution also provides WORM (write once, read many) for compliance purposes and Ransomware protection. EWH Data Center is a highly secure, fully redundant environment that meets Campus security requirements.

Versioning and immutability

Options for versioning and immutability (WORM) are available.

What are some examples of ways I might use Active Archive Object Storage?

Store and protect any amount of data for a range of use cases, such as data lakes, websites, mobile applications, backup and restore, archive, enterprise applications, IoT devices, and big data analytics
Manage massive amounts of unstructured data and is suited for large sequential workloads.

Backup and recovery target destination is one of the most common uses for on-premise object storage is the target destination for commercial backup and recovery software, like CommVault, Cohesity, and Veeam. Popular free and open-source backup and recovery software like BorgBackup, restic, duplicati, kopia, and Bacula works with Active Archive Object Storage, too.

What tools are compatible with Active Archive Object Storage?

Nearly any service or tool that can interact with AWS S3 can also interact with Active Archive Object Storage. This includes the free AWS-cli, rclone, and gcloud command-line tools from Amazon and Google, respectively.
Active Archive Object Storage provides a free cloud storage browsing tool with a graphical user interface (GUI) available free of charge. Open-source projects like Cyberduck, S3 Browser, and Mountain Duck provide a polished experience when browsing, synchronizing, and transferring data. Backup software like restic and MSP360 also are compatible with Active Archive Object Storage.
The vendor maintains a database of certified tools and software that's been evaluated to work without issue.
Works with Globus as well.

Who can use the Active Archive Object Storage service?

The Active Archive Object Storage service is available to individuals and units with a chart string to purchase the solution. It's available for all data risk classifications, provided its use meets Minimum Security Standards.

What does the Active Archive Storage service cost?

An individual or business unit will need to do the following:

Consult with the Berkeley IT Storage and Backup group on the appropriate configuration to meet the business need. Email storageteam@lists.berkeley.edu to arrange a consultation.
Work with Berkeley IT Storage and Backup group to purchase the equipment. The following will come with the equipment purchase.
- Five-year 24 X 7 vendor software and hardware support
- 24 X 7 bIT Storage Administrator support for the service

Berkeley IT Data Center costs $17.82 per rack-unit per month. Includes all utilities and remote access services

How do I sign up for the Active Archive Object storage service?

To get started with Active Archive Object storage, submit a ServiceNow request via email to the following address, Storage-ticket@berkeley.edu, and a Storage Engineer will contact you to discuss your request.