Case Study: Bodleian Library achieves robust digital preservation and file integrity monitoring for 22 million files with Zabbix

Digital Preservation Micro Services + Zabbix Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford

The Bodleian Libraries at the University of Oxford, one of Europe’s oldest and largest library systems, needed to strengthen digital preservation across its core repositories (ORA, Digital Bodleian and BEAM). The BDLSS team—already using Zabbix for infrastructure monitoring—found the repositories lacked fixity checking, file‑format characterisation and validation, virus checking, and repository-level metrics and reporting.

They built a Digital Preservation Microservices proof of concept: a File Integrity Worker scans repositories, captures metadata and SHA512 checksums, and indexes results in Elasticsearch; Zabbix pulls 30+ repository metrics (with secure Kerberos HTTP auth) and Grafana uses the Zabbix API to provide dashboards and reports. The rollout has tracked over 22 million files across three repositories, enables storage forecasting, alerting and exportable reports, and will be expanded with services for virus checking, backup verification, copy consistency and file-format analysis and validation.

Bodleian Library