Object Storage Cold Archiving Solution

Built for long-term data storage, constructing secure, intelligent, and sustainable cold data infrastructure.

Core Pain Points

Long-Term Storage Challenges

Pain Point: Data needs to be stored for decades, facing multiple risks including media aging, technology obsolescence, and regulatory changes.

Technical Challenges:

• Limited hardware lifespan (tape typically 10-30 years)
• Old data formats cannot adapt to new systems
• High compliance audit costs

RustFS Solution:

• Lightweight, agentless architecture: data is written continuously to standard S3 buckets, so it stays accessible through a stable, widely supported protocol
• Media-agnostic storage: objects can move between media generations without application changes
• Audit support: audit logging and retention policies help you demonstrate compliance

Offline Media Disaster Recovery

Pain Point: Offline storage is affected by the physical environment and human operational errors, and traditional archive solutions carry data loss risks of their own.

Technical Challenges:

• Physical damage risk to tape libraries
• High network latency for cross-regional replication
• Long restore times for cold data (hours to days)

RustFS Solution:

• Tiered media strategy: combine object storage with low-cost archive media for disaster recovery copies
• Cold data direct read: data on warm tiers can be read without a restore/rehydration step
• Metadata synchronization: replication keeps copies consistent across sites

Air-Gap and Ransomware Protection

Pain Point: Long-term data is susceptible to malware and ransomware, potentially rendering archives unusable.

Technical Challenges:

• High cost of implementing an air gap
• Risk of silent data corruption accumulating over time
• Risk of metadata index loss

RustFS Solution:

• Immutable storage: object locking (WORM) prevents tampering with archived objects
• Self-healing verification: periodic checksum verification with erasure coding repairs silent errors automatically
• Offline and isolated copies: replication to physically isolated or offline media limits the blast radius of an attack

Solutions

Tiered Storage Engine

Intelligent Tiering

Automatically divides storage tiers based on access frequency (hot→warm→cold→deep cold), migrating data to low-cost media (such as HDD, tape, or optical) by policy.

Cross-Platform Compatibility

S3-compatible access connects public cloud and private deployments seamlessly.

Long-Term Data Management Technology

Media-Agnostic Design

A logical abstraction layer shields hardware differences, supporting smooth migration between media generations.

Self-Healing Data Inspection

Periodic checksum and erasure coding verification repairs silent errors automatically.

Secure and Trusted System

Air Gap Support

Physical isolation and offline media implement a "data vault" that resists network attacks.

Tamper-Evident Auditing

Object locking and audit logs keep operation history verifiable.

Green Energy Practices

Low-Power Storage

Cold tiers on spun-down disks or offline media consume far less energy than always-on storage.

Hot-Cold Collaborative Scheduling

Access-pattern-driven tiering keeps only the data you actually use on powered media.

Core Advantage Comparison

Industry Scenario Empowerment

Financial Compliance Archiving

Audio/video records are automatically classified and retained to meet banking regulators' multi-year retention requirements.

Supercomputing Center Cold Backup

PB-scale scientific research data protected with erasure coding and compression for dense, durable storage.

Media Asset Library

4K/8K original film archives combine archive media with object storage for fast retrieval of copyrighted material.