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Migrating a Windows 2000 Database Server to Virtualized and Emulated hardware
We have recently started some research at Archives New Zealand to investigate the best approaches for appraising, transferring (where relevant) and preserving databases.
As part of this research we will be undertaking case studies of a number of databases. The case studies will involve a number of aspects including where possible testing one or more preservation approaches on each database. We hope to publish the results of this research at the end of the project.
As part of one of the case studies we recently migrated an entire Windows 2000 Server machine to virtualized hardware and onto emulated hardware. The motherboard and other components failed during transport so the process proved particularly challenging but was ultimately successful.
The machine held an MSSQL database with a custom HTML front-end. The database consisted of a digital index to some paper records. The paper records had been transferred to us earlier from the agency (LINZ) that gave us the database to do research on. The migrated and virtualised (or emulated) database may now be used in our reading room(s) to aid users in discovering and accessing the transferred paper records.
Attached to this post is some relatively brief documentation of the process. This version has had the passwords that were recovered from the machine removed from it.
This example will be included in the case study for this database with a discussion of the value of the process versus the resources required etc. Those aspects are possibly the most interesting for this community but hopefully there is some value in this process documentation also.
Preservation Topics: EmulationMigrationPreservation StrategiesDatabase Archiving AttachmentSize
Database Migration Process Documentation1.02 MB
It’s Preservation Week! How are you celebrating it?
It’s Preservation Week! How are you celebrating it?
Attending an event at your local library?
Holding an event?
Thinking about some of your own personal collections that may need preservation treatment to pass on?
Even though our blog focuses on the preservation of digital materials, we are about raising awareness and promoting preservation-related activities.
Still image from 1980’s film "Preservation: An Investment in the Future"
That’s why this afternoon, I attended the first Preservation Week event here at the Library of Congress. Our Library’s Preservation Directorate, which works to ensure the long-term care and access to collections in original or reformatted form, screened a 1980’s film about the history of the Library’s preservation activities at that time.
The film highlighted the innovative methods and best practices used 30 years ago to care, restore and preserve the Library’s collections, such as the binding methods for library materials, the detailed steps involved in microfilming collections, and the deacidification process to protect books. Whether nostalgic to some or vintage to others, it literally showed our organization has come a long-way while maintaining our core mission.
The Library is holding more educational and informational events this week, including seminars and webinars.
If you’re looking for events or activities in your area, ALA’s Preservation Week event map is a fantastic resource.
And if you’re awareness has been raised, you can learn to care for you personal collections at home. Here are some good “starting-out” informational resources, whether you are caring for physical objects, digitizing photos, or saving your personal digital materials.
- Library of Congress, Preservation Directorate: Caring for Your Family Treasures: Learn about the importance of caring and protecting everyday family treasures, as well information and links to other resources.
- Beginning Digitization Principles for Restoring Old Photographs: A blog post from Familysearch.org discussing considerations when scanning old photographs.
- Personal Digital Archiving: This site provides some tips to help make your personal “born digital” information last.
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View Online Asger Askov Blekinge 2012-04-23T13:12:22ZUpdate on jpylyzer
In this blog post I will give a brief update of the latest jpylyzer developments. Jpylyzer is a validation and feature extraction tool for the JP2 (JPEG 2000 Part 1) still image format.
History of jpylyzerAround mid-summer 2011, the KB started initial preparations for migrating 146 TB of TIFF images from the Dutch Metamorfoze program to JP2. We realised that the possibility of hardware failure (e.g. short network interruptions) during the migration process would imply a major risk for the creation of malformed and damaged files. Around the same time, we received some rather worrying reports from the British Library, who were confronted with JP2 images that contained damage that couldn’t be detected with existing tools such as JHOVE.
This prompted me to have a go at writing a rudimentary software tool that was able to detect some simple forms of file corruption in JP2. A blog post I wrote on this resulted in quite a bit of feedback, and several people asked about the possibility to extend the tool’s functionality to a full-fledged JP2 validator and feature extractor. Since this fitted in nicely with some SCAPE work that was envisaged on quality assurance in imaging workflows, I started work on a first prototype of jpylyzer, which saw the light of day in December.
In the remainder of this blog post I will outline the main developments that have happened since then.
Refactoring of existing codeShortly after the release of the first prototype, my KB colleague René van der Ark spontaneously offered to do a refactoring job on my original code, which was clumsy and unnecessarily lengthy in places. This has resulted in a code that is more modular, and which adheres more closely to established programming practices. As a result, the refactored code is significantly more maintainable than the original one, which makes it easier for other programmers to contribute to jpylyzer. This should also contribute to the long-term sustainability of the software.
New featuresSince the first prototype the following functionality was added to jpylyzer:
- New validator functions were added for XML boxes, UUID boxes, UUID Info boxes, Palette boxes and Component Mapping boxes.
- A check was added that verifies whether the number of tiles in an image matches the image- and tile size information in the codestream header.
- Another check was added that verifies whether all tile-parts within each tile exist.
- The ICC profile feature extraction function has been given an overhaul, and it now extracts all ICC header items. In addition, the output is now reported in a more user-friendly format.
- For codestream comments, all characters from the Latin character set are now supported.
- The reporting of the validation results has been made more concise. By default, jpylyzer now only reports the results of validation tests that failed (previously all test results were reported). This behaviour can be overruled with a new –verbose switch.
In addition to the above, various bugs and minor issues have been addressed as well.
Debian packagesDuring the SCAPE Braga meeting in February, work started on the creation of Debian packages for jpylyzer. The availability of Debian packages greatly simplifies jpylyzer‘s installation on Linux-based systems. This work was done by Dave Tarrant (University of Southampton), Miguel Ferreira, Rui Castro, Hélder Silva (KEEP Solutions) and Rainer Schmidt (AIT).
Jpylyzer now hosted by OPFIn order to make a tool sustainable, it is important that its maintenance and development are not solely dependent on one single institution or person. Because of this, jpylyzer is now hosted by the Open Planets Foundation, which ensures the involvement of a wider community. Jpylyzer also has its own home page on the OPF site. It contains links to the source code, Windows executables, Debian packages and the User Manual.
Jpylyzer home pagehttp://www.openplanetsfoundation.org/software/jpylyzer
Johan van der Knijff
KB / National Library of the Netherlands
Update on jpylyzer
In this blog post I will give a brief update of the latest jpylyzer developments. Jpylyzer is a validation and feature extraction tool for the JP2 (JPEG 2000 Part 1) still image format.
History of jpylyzerAround mid-summer 2011, the KB started initial preparations for migrating 146 TB of TIFF images from the Dutch Metamorfoze program to JP2. We realised that the possibility of hardware failure (e.g. short network interruptions) during the migration process would imply a major risk for the creation of malformed and damaged files. Around the same time, we received some rather worrying reports from the British Library, who were confronted with JP2 images that contained damage that couldn’t be detected with existing tools such as JHOVE.
This prompted me to have a go at writing a rudimentary software tool that was able to detect some simple forms of file corruption in JP2. A blog post I wrote on this resulted in quite a bit of feedback, and several people asked about the possibility to extend the tool’s functionality to a full-fledged JP2 validator and feature extractor. Since this fitted in nicely with some SCAPE work that was envisaged on quality assurance in imaging workflows, I started work on a first prototype of jpylyzer, which saw the light of day in December.
In the remainder of this blog post I will outline the main developments that have happened since then.
Refactoring of existing codeShortly after the release of the first prototype, my KB colleague René van der Ark spontaneously offered to do a refactoring job on my original code, which was clumsy and unnecessarily lengthy in places. This has resulted in a code that is more modular, and which adheres more closely to established programming practices. As a result, the refactored code is significantly more maintainable than the original one, which makes it easier for other programmers to contribute to jpylyzer. This should also contribute to the long-term sustainability of the software.
New featuresSince the first prototype the following functionality was added to jpylyzer:
- New validator functions were added for XML boxes, UUID boxes, UUID Info boxes, Palette boxes and Component Mapping boxes.
- A check was added that verifies whether the number of tiles in an image matches the image- and tile size information in the codestream header.
- Another check was added that verifies whether all tile-parts within each tile exist.
- The ICC profile feature extraction function has been given an overhaul, and it now extracts all ICC header items. In addition, the output is now reported in a more user-friendly format.
- For codestream comments, all characters from the Latin character set are now supported.
- The reporting of the validation results has been made more concise. By default, jpylyzer now only reports the results of validation tests that failed (previously all test results were reported). This behaviour can be overruled with a new –verbose switch.
In addition to the above, various bugs and minor issues have been addressed as well.
Debian packagesDuring the SCAPE Braga meeting in February, work started on the creation of Debian packages for jpylyzer. The availability of Debian packages greatly simplifies jpylyzer‘s installation on Linux-based systems. This work was done by Dave Tarrant (University of Southampton), Miguel Ferreira, Rui Castro, Hélder Silva (KEEP Solutions) and Rainer Schmidt (AIT).
Jpylyzer now hosted by OPFIn order to make a tool sustainable, it is important that its maintenance and development are not solely dependent on one single institution or person. Because of this, jpylyzer is now hosted by the Open Planets Foundation, which ensures the involvement of a wider community. Jpylyzer also has its own home page on the OPF site. It contains links to the source code, Windows executables, Debian packages and the User Manual.
Jpylyzer home pagehttp://www.openplanetsfoundation.org/software/jpylyzer
Johan van der Knijff
KB / National Library of the Netherlands