How is data stored on Inaturalist? How long? Is there a back up? Has there ever been a crash that caused a lost in data? Thank you Michelle

You all basically put the pieces together here, but to clarify/confirm: Observation photos are stored with Amazon Web Services (AWS) Other data is with Microsoft Azure We keep daily backups for 2 months and monthly backups for a year. We have never had extensive data loss, but we occasionally use…

you may want to take a look at other threads like this: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/how-confident-can-we-be-that-inaturalist-data-will-be-preserved/3248/13 . based on these questions, i suspect you might be contemplating a use for the system that is not really what it’s intended for. for example…

i sort of think that if you’re asking these kinds of questions, you might be contemplating a use for the system that is not really what it’s intended for. i don’t think it’s intended to be a photo storage site, and i don’t think it should be used as the primary repository for critical data either. …

I didn’t read it as hostile myself, in fact I always tell people to be sure to download any important data locally because it’s not like a typical community science research project (see the “ what is it ” page for some background on that). iNat users can choose to delete all their observations and ID…

I was wondering a similar thing. I am a computer nerd, along with plants, and was wondering if it has its own servers in California, or it uses Google’s servers.

I believe but am not 100 percent certain the site uses cloud storage and technology donated by Microsoft, so it should be safe as long as that arrangement continues.

It uses Amazon cloud storage and probably the most safe way to store data on 4 continents on seven servers. I rely fully on iNat for photos and data and do not keep copies myself, actually most of it i delete within 24Hours after upload.

Yes there has been a crash and mirculous the recoverd all the data, as far as i know, with help of amazon. (or Microsoft Our hosting company decided to do some more unplanned maintenance overnight that affected the regional portals. Everything should be back to normal right now. They have been fix…

Unless they’ve migrated since 2018 it is Azure they use, which is Microsoft not Amazon https://groups.google.com/g/inaturalist/c/w-LZihng0_s/m/P2oKzO-fAwAJ

Probably Azure [image] iNat working through some server issues right now Update: a disk that we share between several severs stopped working this morning for reasons that are still a mystery. We mostly use that disk for caching files, i.e. non-essential ephemera, but there are a few kinds of dat…

But once i read Blockquote Our photos are hosted on Amazon’s servers, which are currently having difficulties ( http://status.aws.amazon.com/ ), which is why users might not be seeing photos or are able to upload photos. Your photos should be safe, just not accessible right no and this, but is ev…

How is data stored on Inaturalist?

General

carrieseltzer October 28, 2020, 2:08pm 15

In the end, we didn’t lose any data in this quoted event after all.

Topic		Replies	Views
Is there a recommended way to backup all my iNat data? General question	33	2939	March 10, 2023
How confident can we be that iNaturalist data will be preserved? General	21	3405	May 22, 2019
What happens if iNaturalist folds? General	21	1756	October 27, 2023
Backup: what if iNat suddenly disappeared General	24	1971	January 23, 2024
What to do with photos? Nature Talk question	25	3422	October 24, 2019

How is data stored on Inaturalist?

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