CSI has created a methodology that offers and unlimited storage capacity for your Virtual Observer implementation. There is no need to worry about hard drive space, maximum storage capacity or total system failure due to unavailable disk space. You may rest assured that the system will function without interruption and be capable of retaining events for and unlimited period of time.

Virtual Observer contains two services that work together to create the illusion of endless storage. The first service is the Archiving Service. This service duplicates each recorded event, as soon as the recording is complete, onto a DVD-RAM removable media pack. As events are recorded and stored to on-line storage they are also copied to removable archived storage. When a removable media pack is full, a label is printed and the media pack is stored in a safe secure library for later retrieval. A new empty media pack is inserted into the drive and the process starts over again. The archive service will pause and wait for the full media pack to be replaced before continuing and then eventually catch up to itself. Therefore there is no immediate threat should a person not be unavailable to swap media packs.

As time goes on and events are recorded and saved to on-line storage the hard drive will eventually begin to fill up. The second service in the Virtual Storage process is the Purge Service. This service monitors the on-line storage's available disk space and will automatically purge a percentage of the oldest events when a particular threshold of available storage is breached. These two services running together will guarantee that there is always a specific amount of available disk space for on-line storage and also ensure that all events are retained in the archive library for later retrieval.

Although archived events are stored on the removable archive media packs a pointer to those events is saved to a special archive table in the on-line database. Because these are just pointers they do not impeded on-line storage space. Users of the system who have been granted permission to the on-line archive library will be able to query the database and search for archived events. Once an event is found the system will ask you to load a specific archive media pack from the library into the archive playback device in the Virtual Observer server. Once the event is loaded the system will play the event and show event information as you normally see in the Virtual Observer Event Log and Event Player. At this time you can save the audio and screen activity using the players Save As WAV or Package Event features. The event may then be emailed to the proper individuals for legal or liability purposes.