iconik backups
When you upload your content to iconik we want you to feel confident that the data will remain secure even in the event of a system failure. To facilitate this we perform daily backups of vital data in the system. This document describes what data is backed up and how long we keep the backups.
Backups are kept for two reasons, both to restore the system to the latest state in the event of failure, and also to be able to restore data that was deleted by mistake, either through human error or because of an error in the software.
Database backups
The main database in iconik is Datastax Cassandra. This database runs on a multi-node cluster in several geographical locations. This gives us a highly reliable database which is resistant to outage in a single location. We also take daily backups of cassandra in case of a complete system failure. These backups are taken as snapshots on the database application level and the snapshot files are copied to a separate Google Cloud or AWS bucket which the backup scripts can write data to but cannot delete from. These backups are encrypted at rest using encryption keys managed by the cloud provider. This makes sure that backups cannot be deleted by mistake or because of a bug or malicious attack.
Elasticsearch backups
iconik uses the search engine Elasticsearch to provide fast and powerful searching. The elasticsearch indexes are not used to store any primary copies of the data. It is only a copy of the data stored in Cassandra. However, in order to provide a fast recovery in case of failure we take daily backups of the Elasticsearch indexes as well. This is done through the built-in snapshot mechanism in Elasticsearch and snapshots are stored in a dedicated cloud bucket in a separate geographic region, which also is encrypted at rest.
Media backups
Media, including originals (excluding those stored in regional files buckets), proxies and keyframes which are stored on iconik-managed storages are replicated to a secondary cloud bucket in another region which the iconik system itself doesn't have access to. The exception to this is media which is stored on iconik-managed regional buckets. The content of these buckets are not backed up, and it is the customer's responsibility to configure the system to replicate this data to other storages, such as an on-premise ISG for example.
If you store media in your own buckets instead of the iconik-managed buckets then iconik does not take any backups of that data, and we advise you to look into a backup strategy of your own if needed.
How long are backups kept?
All backups are cleaned after 30 days in accordance with our Data Processing Agreement.