As soon as vendor of an Archive solution announces the discontinuation of the archive product, there are many open questions among users of their solution and sometimes even a slight panic. With the recent announcement of Sony “…that the Optical Disc Archive products have been discontinued in all regions as of March 31st, 2025″, this is now happening to Sony ODA users. Questions that arise are:
- Can I access my files on ODA and for how long?
- Is it safe to continue using ODA?
- What to do with previously written ODA media?
- What is the best way to handle the situation and move forward?
- How to migrate ODA to another solution?
- Would I gain from a migration and what specifically?
- How to plan a migration from ODA?
Some assurance is needed here. The solution you purchased is still operating and will probably continue to do so if nothing is changed. Since there is no further development and support, it makes sense to keep the current machine with the orphaned solution as it is right now. No updates of any kind should be done as well as no additional installations. Nothing should be done that could stop it from being operational as it is now.
You can think of it as a toaster. It does one thing only and that should not change. In this case, it keeps your files available if needed. There is actually not much of a difference if you decide to stop working with one solution, if the vendor discontinues it or if if they go out of business. In any case it needs to be kept operational for the time being. Plans should be made for a migration.
To keep the perspective clear let´s have a quick look at the difference between Backup and Archive.
In case you have a professional Backup solution in place it needs to be clear that it can not replace an archive! Since a backup is a duplication of all files currently used for production, it will overwrite itself after the specified retention time is reached.
With Archive it is more complex since there might be dozens or even hundreds of media already written. Getting a new archive solution in place soon allows you to continue archiving completed assets and projects. There were good reasons that made you start archiving in the first place.
They still hold true:
- Reducing load and space on your production storage
- Preserve projects and assets for long-term
- Use media because of durability
As an alternative to ODA we suggest to take a look at Archiware P5 Archive. Archiware P5 Archive adds MAM like features to the Archive:
- Customisable metadata fields
- Combined search
- Thumbnails of images
- Proxy clips of videos
Additionally, with the P5 Archive DLM, later migration or replication of the archive or parts of it between disk, LTO and cloud storage or from one LTO generation to the next is available.
Plus, the complete set of Archive, Backup and Cloning/Replication is covered by the P5 suite in one solution with one interface. Protecting all assets during the complete workflow and after completion becomes seamless and easy.
Especially the easy-to-use file catalog with customisable metadata helps to build a “Single Source of Truth” for the production. Finding files becomes really quick and easy. There is only one place to search – the archive index. This alone saves time for searching and supports re-use, reference and returning customer’s expectations.
What are the first steps to deal with the discontinued ODA situation?
1. Stop archiving with ODA. Continue using it increases the risk of losing files if it stops working for any reason. Since the solution is no longer supported, it does not make sense to put additional files in it.
2. Treat all already written media with due respect and keep within the range of the specification for their storage environment (temperature and humidity). Keep them physically safe and away from the active workstation. This way they will last as long as possible.
3. Start your calculations to find out what your needs are.
- How many files of what total size have you archived per month (or per year)?
- What volume do you expect to archive in the future?
- What are you current and future needs and requirements?
- What level of security do you need (like redundant tape sets and off-site storage)?
- How much would it cost to re-shoot or re-produce material and as a consequence, what budget do you need for long-term preservation?
If you haven’t restored frequently from your existing archive, this may change considerably once you have a MAM-like catalog available like P5 Archive offers with your own customised metadata schema. Now the Archive can really contribute to production, support requests of returning customers and make re-use of assets quick and easy.
4. Now that you start a new Archive, ask yourself who will be using the archive and how?
What do you need in terms of metadata fields in the catalog? If more people are involved write use cases to discover metadata needs and workflow implications.
5. What storage medium is best moving forward disk, LTO or cloud?
Before you start a new Archive, it might make sense to again ask the question of the right storage medium. While hard disks are relatively cheap, storing it for long-term is risky and outside of its specification. It works well though for time limited archives that are only kept for months or a year.
Cloud storage gives extreme flexibility as it can be expanded any time and does not require any hardware to be installed. Access speed for up- and download varies considerably depending on region. Cost starts low. But cost grows as more storage is needed and can increase more especially for retrieval. Even if not accessed at all, there are monthly fees to pay.
LTO tape storage is the most durable of all. It as a proven shelf life of decades. Several security layers protect the data:
- Read-after-write guarantees that all files are on the tape that are transferred to it.
- Error correction assures that even possible dropouts are covered.
- Auto-speed takes care that the tape and drive are streaming within optimum speed.
- The price point of below 8USD/EUR per TB are unbeatable
A tape archive scales extremely easy by just adding more tapes. There are good reasons that most big corporations, banks, insurers and IT companies use LTO to keep massive amounts of data for long-term.
6. Re-think your file name conventions
Metadata are important. They hold information about the files and become the key when finding files later, sometimes years after production when no one remembers details of it. The file name is the most robust place for metadata. It is readable on all file systems and operating systems, gives a quick orientation of what a file is and can prevent mishaps. Starting a new archive is an opportunity to build a file name convention that suits your need best. For a systematic approach see this article.
7. Building a new archive and migrating files also offers the opportunity to transcode material that is encoded in legacy codes.
8. Watch your access pattern of the legacy archive. How often do you need files restored?
This indicates if it makes sense to migrate all existing media to the new solution.
- If you access the legacy archive rarely, the best approach might be to keep it as is and build a new archive for new content.
- If you access it more frequently it might be helpful to migrate the archive starting from the most recent content and moving backwards to the oldest. You can restore and re-archive in batches or tape by tape depending on resources and urgency. This way only limited disk storage is needed to hold contents of one or some media before it gets archived again with the new solution.
Migrating previously archived material offers the opportunity to add metadata, thumbnails and proxy clips. Browsing and finding files becomes a lot easier this way.
Switching from ODA to Archiware P5 Archive brings a number of benefits with it:
- Easy installation
- Configure and use via browser
- MAM-like features for the archive
- LTO tape hardware can be used for Backup AND Archive
- Disk, tape and cloud support
- Runs on macOS, Windows, Linux, QNAP, Synology and NetGear
Additionally, P5 Archive supports LTO drives and libraries of all vendors. More vendors than ever offer LTO desktop drives with Thunderbolt for direct connection to a Mac or PC: mLogic, MagStor, OWC, Symply and others. When using tape libraries, multiple drives can be used for drive parallelization to maximise throughput. When using two drives (either stand-alone or in a library) tape cloning can be used to generate two identical tape sets for maximum security and off-site storage.
Taking the right steps to start a ODA migration makes the situation easy to handle. Accepting the opportunity to fine tune the workflow, customise a metadata schema and build a MAM like media archive with P5 Archive supports present production, saves time and keeps all finalised files in easy reach for re-use, repurposing, reference and the requests of returning customers.
Archiware offers a full-featured free 30-day trial license to test all modules of P5:
- P5 Synchronize – Replicate data to ensure high availability
- P5 Backup – Back up server data to disk, tape and cloud
- P5 Archive – Move or migrate data offline to disk, tape and cloud
- P5 Archive DLM – migrate/replicate archived files between disk, LTO and cloud storage
