# Backup storage policy — open-weight model reserve

**Status:** facility pin **Scaleway Object Storage** (2026-09-13)  
**Related:** `INTENT.md`, `SCOPE.md`, `inventory/collection-policy.md`,
`docs/decisions/2026-09-13-scaleway-object-reserve.md`  
**Supersedes storage pin:** 2026-07-28 VAULT HD (now staging only)  
**Adjacent:** `disaster-control` BackupPolicy and `rapp-postgres` WAL
archive — **different buckets, different lifecycles**

---

## Purpose

Define where Freedom Intelligence stores **open-weight model blobs** (and
justified companions), how much we allow ourselves to spend, and how this
reserve relates to other lab backup facilities.

Git never stores weight tensors. Git stores:

* inventory catalog metadata (`inventory/catalog/`)
* policies and schemas
* research briefs

---

## Storage class

| Requirement | Policy |
| ----------- | ------ |
| **Class** | Backup / bulk durable object storage — **not** hot cluster PVCs |
| **Facility** | Scaleway Object Storage `nl-ams` via `reef-storage` |
| **Durability** | Provider 11-nines claim; independent of Host Europe `railiance01` and of the workstation HD |
| **Performance** | Sequential restore for training/inference pull is enough |
| **Access** | Operator and approved lab hosts; not a public mirror |
| **Separation** | **Never** the postgres backup bucket (`railiance-platform-pg-backup` expires at 30 days) |

Platform backup paths such as `/opt/backup/railiance/{infra,cluster}/` and
`~/.cache/railiance/backups/` are **operational recovery** lanes. Model
weights belong in the FI object bucket.

---

## Target location

| Field | Value |
| ----- | ----- |
| **Facility** | Scaleway Object Storage, region `nl-ams` |
| **Endpoint** | `https://s3.nl-ams.scw.cloud` |
| **Bucket** | `railiance-fi-open-weight-reserve` |
| **Lifecycle** | no expiry; `strategic/` → Glacier after 90 days; S-tier PUT is Glacier immediately |
| **Attributes** | `reef:storage/substrate/object-stores/fi-open-weight-reserve.yaml` |
| **Credentials** | OpenBao / `railiance-platform` — never git |

**Bulk transfer:** [diskless streaming on Railiance](streaming-reserve.md),
with 64 MiB parts and a 512 MiB process memory limit. Weight files are never
staged on WSL or on the remote host's root disk. VAULT is an optional explicit
R-spine cache only (`--local-download`), not an intermediate reserve step.

### Prefix shape (pinned)

```text
s3://railiance-fi-open-weight-reserve/
├── models/{org}__{name}/{revision}/      # R / W  (One Zone IA)
├── strategic/{org}__{name}/{revision}/   # S      (Glacier)
├── companions/
├── staging/
└── manifests/{org}__{name}/{revision}/MANIFEST.json
```

Map each `{org}__{name}/{revision}` to an inventory catalog entry.
`collection.storage_path` is the `s3://` URI.

---

## Capacity budget

| Parameter | Policy |
| --------- | ------ |
| **Gate** | **Euros per month**, not GiB |
| **Soft budget** | **€15 / month** ex VAT for this bucket |
| **Hard backstop** | Founder Scaleway project billing alert (no provider euro hard-stop) |
| **Growth review** | When the running month is ≥ **70% of soft budget (~€10.50)** |
| **Per-pull threshold** | See `inventory/collection-policy.md` |
| **Eviction** | Prefer drop **W** and easily re-obtained quants; protect unique **S** SOTA bases and the **R** spine |

Rough cost (2026-09-13 Scaleway list prices):

| Mix | Class | ≈ € / month |
| --- | ----- | ----------: |
| R-spine ~45 GiB | One Zone IA | 0.54 |
| V4-Flash ~167 GiB | Glacier | 0.42 |
| Kimi K3 ~1454 GiB | Glacier | 3.69 |
| Those three together | | **~4.65** |

Glacier restore is €0.009/GB — pay it when we actually need the weights
on a GPU host.

---

## Integrity and provenance

For every completed collection:

1. Record source URL and revision in the catalog entry.
2. Store checksums (`sha256` of each blob or upstream manifest digest)
   in `MANIFEST.json` under the STANDARD `manifests/` prefix.
3. Record download date (UTC) and downloader identity.
4. Prefer official org releases over anonymous re-uploads.
5. Keep license text or SPDX id in catalog; refuse unclear licenses.

Verification: source hashes, explicit part/composite MD5 ETags and remote object identities
must match before `collected`. `verified` requires restore/readback checksums;
Glacier HEAD alone is insufficient. See the streaming transfer contract.

---

## Retention

| Class | Retention |
| ----- | --------- |
| **Strategic capability (S)** | Keep until explicit deprecation; Glacier |
| **Runnable spine (R)** | Keep while still the lab default; One Zone IA |
| **Working set** | Active experiment bases + optional one superseded revision |
| **Staging** | Max 14 days incomplete, then purge |
| **Deprecated / evicted** | Metadata retained in catalog; objects may be deleted |

---

## Encryption and offsite

| Topic | Policy |
| ----- | ------ |
| **At rest** | Scaleway provider-managed |
| **In transit** | TLS to `s3.nl-ams.scw.cloud` |
| **Workstation copy** | Optional R-spine on VAULT; not a second SoT |
| **Ops backups** | Do not mix with Forgejo/k3s dumps |

---

## What must not live here

* Closed weights or artifacts whose terms forbid offline retention
* Secrets, API keys, customer data, or ungoverned training corpora
* Operational backups (databases, k3s state, Forgejo dumps)
* Git LFS dumps of full model trees
* Objects in `railiance-platform-pg-backup`

---

## Operator checklist

- [x] Choose facility: Scaleway object storage (2026-09-13)
- [x] Set capacity gate: **€15 / month** soft
- [x] Pin prefix layout above
- [ ] Create bucket + scoped key (FI-WP-0004-T08)
- [ ] Smoke PUT/GET
- [ ] First S collect: DeepSeek-V4-Flash-0731 (FI-WP-0004-T09)

### Pin log

| Date | Operator | Change |
| ---- | -------- | ------ |
| 2026-07-24 | foundation | Policy created; path unpinned |
| 2026-07-24 | operator direction | Facility intent = 1 TB local NAS; soft quota 850 GiB |
| 2026-07-28 | operator direction | **Interim pin:** workstation VAULT HD |
| 2026-09-13 | FI-WP-0004 | **SoT pin:** Scaleway `nl-ams`; VAULT demoted to staging; euro gate replaces GiB quota |