Impact

Overview

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) needed new functionality for its Presidential archives. Softek was there to redesign a functional platform and migrate mission-critical data.

Challenge

NARA modernized its systems by upgrading to an AWS GovCloud platform to host its archival data. EOP 43 and 44 datasets existed on legacy systems that contained hundreds of terabytes and lacked future-forward functionality, capacity, and response times.

To ensure their archivists could answer to records requests (e.g., Freedom of Information Act) quickly and thoroughly and provide the public with a responsive, modern digital archive, NARA needed to redesign and replatform their systems on the AWS GovCloud.

Solution

Softek designed a scalable AWS architecture for current and future EOP applications that:

• Standardized EOP performance against the growing volume of data it manages, and
• Created a repeatable process for standing up new EOP instances.

We refactored and redesigned the EOP from its old Hitachi Content Platform to NARA’s AWS GovCloud, creating a scalable and secure platform with 99.99% availability. This required a complete redesign of the system that replicated its modes within the new cloud.

Once redesigned, Softek used SAS-based data migration cycles, with critical SAS packets migrated up front, to transfer data to the AWS GovCloud.We ensured no loss in functionality or performance due to migration and met all federal and NARA IT security requirements.

To enhance the redesign and improve functionality, Softek built a ‘Google-like’ search engine that returned rapid, reliable results for all media forms, providing archivists with improved access to records with faster return times.

Results