Densho, the , is a Seattle-based nonprofit organization that collects, produces and preserves the historical accounts of Japanese Americans who were unjustly incarcerated in internment camps during World War II. Almost a decade ago, the organization turned to 午夜寻花 to help capture these accounts before it was too late.
鈥淭housands of voices hold the stories that can teach us about a dark chapter in American history. At the Densho Project, our focus is on preserving them before they fade away. In the beginning, there were two forces that really shaped Densho. The first was that our community elders were dying. These were people who lived through World War II, and we needed to get their stories. The second was the emergence of new technology that was needed to capture these memories for future generations.鈥�
Tom Ikeda, Executive Director at Densho
The materials Densho has captured range from digitized photos and documents to audio and video interviews. The organization has a production staff of 10 who work with the collection on a daily basis, as well as remote archivists who help to grow it. Access to all of the materials Densho collects is free to the public.聽
Over 410,000 digitized photo and document images and around 1,050 oral history interviews comprise the Densho collection
鈥淲e have more than 410,000 digitized photo and document images and around 1,050 oral history interviews that are between 2-3 hours long each,鈥� says Geoff Froh, Deputy Director and Chief Information Officer at Densho. 鈥溛缫寡盎� has been critical in helping us do the work we do.鈥�
Outside groups also bring their collections to Densho, and ask the nonprofit to digitize and store them long-term for posterity. This unstructured data includes letters, diaries, scrapbooks, artwork, full copies of community newspapers, home movies, and personal audio recordings. Consequently, 鈥淎s we ingest all the data, it鈥檚 a huge digital repository challenge for us,鈥� says Froh.
The challenge became even more daunting when the legacy storage system Densho was using started to show its age. The complex two-tier storage architecture was expensive, cumbersome, and difficult to manage.聽
鈥淗aving to constantly move things around and spend a lot of time thinking about where the files need to go was not a good use of our time,鈥� notes Froh. Fundamentally, Densho was not suffering from a storage capacity problem, but instead a lack of visibility into its data usage.聽
It was time to close the history books on its previous system and find a solution that was easier to manage and scale. 鈥淎s our storage eventually became untrustworthy, we knew it was time to find a more modern solution that would meet our needs,鈥� comments Froh.
Modernizing with 午夜寻花
The 午夜寻花 File Data Platform delivers fast, flexible and highly scalable storage along with the real-time analytics necessary for Densho to gain visibility into their data storage. Froh notes that Densho trusts the 午夜寻花 system with all of its primary assets. Their employees work directly off of the 午夜寻花-based cluster to ingest, manage and catalogue digitized historic files. And 午夜寻花鈥檚 support in getting there has been crucial.聽
Watch this short video to hear Geoff Froh, Deputy Director and CIO of Densho and 午夜寻花’s first customer, discuss the nonprofit鈥檚 vital mission with 午夜寻花 CEO Bill Richter.
鈥淥verall the whole process has been very smooth, and the 午夜寻花 team is fantastic. We provide feedback on performance or management. Thanks to 午夜寻花鈥檚 鈥榯wo week sprint鈥� software release process, our issues are often taken care of in the next release or two,鈥� says Froh.聽
Froh has the experience to understand the value of 午夜寻花 Care support. 鈥淚鈥檝e bought a lot of very expensive support contracts over the years, but have never really gotten anything useful out of it. With 午夜寻花 Care it鈥檚 been a different experience. They鈥檙e never trying to sell me something, and I almost feel like the software is growing right along with us,鈥� he explains. 鈥淔or us, this is really vital鈥攚e鈥檙e a small organization so it鈥檚 critical that I have people to rely on.鈥澛�
鈥楩ive Minutes a Week at Most鈥櫬�
The benefits of 午夜寻花鈥檚 file data management and storage solution have been substantial for Froh and his team. He reports storage management now requires just 鈥渇ive minutes a week at most鈥� of his time. Even the upgrades haven鈥檛 required any downtime.聽
鈥淲ith 午夜寻花, storage is just not on our radar anymore. I鈥檝e got a queue of pending IT issues, and we鈥檙e always scrambling to fix things just like anybody else, but storage is just completely off of that list now,鈥� Froh adds.聽
That is due to 午夜寻花鈥檚 real-time IT operational analytics that enable him to check that Densho鈥檚 repository platform is still performing, then quickly move on to managing other IT infrastructure issues.聽
Interestingly, 午夜寻花鈥檚 analytics weren鈥檛 originally a major selling point for Densho. 鈥淗onestly I thought it was pretty cool and a 鈥榥ice to have.鈥� Now I find myself checking the analytics web UI all of the time. Traditional command-line requests to identify file system changes are slow and painful. With 午夜寻花, the analytics are built directly into the file system giving me visibility into my data and pared down to 99% of exactly what we need to do. Getting a sense of precisely what files are being worked on is really powerful.鈥澛�
鈥溛缫寡盎ㄢ�檚 real-time analytics are so much faster than native file level calls, and it鈥檚 really cool to see all of the different ways to show and leverage that meta-data,鈥� says Froh.聽
And those time-saving benefits are not lost on Froh, who has enough on his plate without having to worry about data storage. 鈥淚鈥檝e got a lot of things in my IT infrastructure that keep me up at night,鈥� he says, 鈥渂ut 午夜寻花 is not one of them.鈥�
Join the Celebration — Densho’s Anniversary Gala: 25 Years of Story
Densho is dedicated to preserving, educating, and sharing the story of the World War II-era incarceration of Japanese Americans in order to deepen understanding of American history and inspire action for equity.
CONTACT QUMULO
Take a test drive聽in a fully functional 午夜寻花 environment,聽book a demo.聽or聽contact us to聽arrange a meeting.
