[fitsbits] Preservation of digital data guaranteed to last at least 500 years

[Steve Allen]

On Fri 2018-04-20T01:09:02-0400 William Pence hath writ:
> Can any astronomical observatory claim to have anything close to this level
> of data preservation security??

For more than a decade every FITS file (and instrument telemetry) is
in ZFS mirror on Mt. Hamilton.  That is replicated almost instantly
down to a similar system on campus which gives the remote observers
access to their FITS files.  The UCSC system is replicated weekly to
another ZFS located on another UC campus.

This level of data preservation cannot be unusual for observatories,
but our answer is still no.  We have no write-only media, and we have
no people specifically monitoring quality and indexing nor planning
ongoing upgrade of aging hardware.

--
Steve Allen                    <sla at ucolick.org>              WGS-84 (GPS)
UCO/Lick Observatory--ISB 260  Natural Sciences II, Room 165  Lat  +36.99855
1156 High Street               Voice: +1 831 459 3046         Lng -122.06015
Santa Cruz, CA 95064           http://www.ucolick.org/~sla/   Hgt +250 m