Update to nearline service
We’re nearly ready to welcome you onto Freezer, NeSI’s new long-term storage platform. The initial storage offering on this new platform replaces our current Nearline service and will offer a similar long-term tape-based solution storing a single copy of data.
Below are important details about our transition from Nearline and our plan for welcoming you onto Freezer.
Help us streamline migration¶
We’re currently migrating your data from Nearline to Freezer so that it is ready and waiting for you on the new platform. To ensure this process runs as efficiently and quickly as possible, please refrain from writing new data or recalling any data after Friday 11 April.
If you have an urgent need to write or recall data beyond 11 April, contact NeSI Support.
Scheduled outage of Nearline¶
To support our transition to Freezer, we’re scheduling a Nearline service outage starting on Monday 14 April. We expect this outage to last about two weeks, during which you will not be able to read or write data to/from Nearline.
If you have regular workflows that use Nearline or anticipate needing to read or write data to Nearline during the outage, get in touch with us so that we can help you prepare.
Transitioning to Freezer¶
To provide more time to complete our migration of data to Freezer, we are working with NIWA to host the NeSI tapes (holding data for the Nearline service) within NIWA’s tape library. This will enable read access to your data after the Nearline outage if required. We expect this transitional phase to last until mid to late May.
If you have an urgent need to read/write to your Nearline data during this transitional phase, please reach out to us.
Read/write access during the transition period:
| Phase | Read access | Read/write access |
|---|---|---|
| Current | available | available until 11 April |
| Preparing for Nearline outage (11-14 April) | no new read access, but existing jobs will be allowed to finish | no new read/write access, existing jobs will finish |
| Nearline service outage (estimate: 2 weeks) and physical tape migration | not available | not available |
| Transitional phase (starting May 1) | available | not available |
| Freezer service available (estimate: mid to late May) | available | available |
Data management¶
The current tapes from Nearline will form part of NIWA’s new long-term storage offering, Rapids. Once all Nearline data has been migrated to NeSI’s Freezer service, its metadata will be removed from Rapids, and over time, the tape storage media will be over-written. This means that the data will be inaccessible on NIWA’s service, however the data itself may be retained until eventual destruction by NIWA when the tapes are decommissioned. We are working with NIWA to ensure that suitable protections are in place and that the data is managed appropriately.
We're here to support you¶
We are ready to provide wrap-around support for you as we modernise and improve our long-term storage service. We have weekly Online Office Hours to talk through any questions you may have or provide one-to-one support. Also, you can email our Support Team at any time.