special report archive exchange format
Front Porch Digital’s commitment to the advancement of an open standard for the long-term storage and preservation of media assets was affirmed with its foundational work with the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) standards committee initiative in 2006. While the SMPTE committee’s work has been intermittent over the past five years, Front Porch Digital has consistently maintained its internal research and development efforts in support of this important long-term challenge. This year, the company announced implementation of AXF, the Archive eXchange Format, as an integral part of the new DIVArchive V7.0 content storage management (CSM) solution. Brian Campanotti, Front Porch Digital’s chief technology officer, reports.
content remains available no matter how technology evolves. At the most basic level, AXF is a file container that can encapsulate any number and any type of files in a fully self-describing package. AXF’s defining attribute is an unusual embedded file system whereby the encapsulated package actually contains its own fully formed file system, which abstracts the
Introducing AXF T
he AXF format is designed to inherently support interoperability among existing, discrete storage systems and also to future- proof digital storage so that
Because it is built around an
embedded file system, AXF is both content and
storage agnostic. In other words, because the AXF object contains the file system, it can exist on any
generation of data tape, spinning disk, optical media, or other storage technology which exists today or may exist tomorrow.
underlying operating system, the storage technology, and the original file system from the AXF object and its valuable payload.
Supporting high volume storage
Because it is built around an embedded file system, AXF is both content and storage agnostic. In other words, because the AXF object contains the file system, it can exist on any generation of data tape, spinning disk, optical media, or other storage technology which exists today
or may exist tomorrow. A prime motivator for developing
an advanced open file specification like AXF was to meet the needs of users attempting to leverage linear data tape storage in demanding environments. Toward that end, AXF is both tuned for performance and designed to scale from simple IT- centric disk-based, single-file applications up to the most demanding media operations, those with petabytes of content stored in long-term archives on data tape. In all cases, AXF offers an abstraction layer that hides the complexities of the storage technology from the higher- level applications, while it also offers fundamental encapsulation, provenance, fixity, portability, and preservation characteristics. In addition, the same self-describing AXF format can be used interchangeably on all current storage technologies, such as spinning disk, flash media and data tape from any manufacturer. Because AXF is media and storage
agnostic, it supports the modern generation of data tape formats such as LTO5 and T10000C, and it also supports formats that can exist with or without a file system, including the Linear Tape File System, or LTFS. As is widely known, however, LTFS has its own limitations, partially resulting
76 l ibe l september/october 2011 l
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