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Cornell University Digital Assets

About

Cornell Digital Assets is a Digital Asset Management (DAM) system designed to help teams efficiently store, organize, search, and share digital assets, such as photos, videos, logos, and other media files with the Cornell community.

Access

Anyone in the Cornell community will be able to sign in with their NetID (not Cornell Optional Email Aliases) and password using SSO. Permissions are automatically assigned by college/unit and roll (i.e. student/faculty/staff/alumni). For help with accessing the tool, or if a person external to Cornell needs access, please contact contact-dam@cornell.edu. Please include your NetID, Cornell affiliation, and reason for additional access.

Storage

Each college/unit at Cornell will have its own dedicated Amazon Web Services (AWS) storage "bucket," where their digital assets will be housed. Assets migrated from Widen will also be organized into these AWS buckets as part of the transition.

AWS storage buckets are data repositories provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS) where files such as photos, videos, and other media assets are securely stored. Each college/unit will have its own bucket to maintain ownership and organization of their assets.

Cornell has an Enterprise Agreement with AWS, which is managed by CIT. Due to this, it was determined that using AWS would be the most cost-effective storage solution for across the university.

Costs

Each college/unit is financially responsible for the storage costs associated with their AWS bucket.

The pricing breakdowns below are based on the costs listed by Amazon on Aug. 4, 2025.

Monthly monitoring costs

All AWS buckets will have a monthly charge for monitoring and automation. That charge is determined by the number of assets. The monthly charge will be $0.0025 per 1,000 objects.

Estimated automation costs
Monitoring and automation Month Year
1,000 objects $0.0025 $0.30
10,000 objects $0.025 $0.30
25,000 objects $0.625 $0.75
50,000 objects $0.125 $1.50
100,000 objects $0.25 $3.00

Monthly storage costs

Storage costs are on the total storage size, not the number of assets.

The automated S3 Intelligent-Tiering costs that include the Archive Instant Access Tier will be used. There are three tiers:

The lifecycle of assets are as follows:

  1. Assets placed in the system are initially uploaded to the Frequent Tier. The Frequent Tier is for images that will get thousands of views daily.
  2. After 30 days, the assets will move down to Infrequent Access.
  3. After 90 days at the Infrequent Tier, assets move to Archive Instant Access Tier.

Most assets will live in the Infrequent Access Tier if accessed for production and will move up and down tiers based on use. Only viral assets linked directly to websites would remain in the Frequent Access Tier. Cost estimates can be based on the total storage size, not the number of assets.

Pricing List from AWS:
S3 Intelligent - Tiering * - Automatic cost savings for data with unknown or changing access patterns

Estimated storage costs for the first year
Storage 100GB 500GB 1TB 5TB 10TB 50TB
Frequent Access at $0.023/GB (1 month) $2.30 $11.50 $23.00 $115.00 $230.00 $1150.00
Infrequent Access at $0.0125/GB (3 months) $3.75 (1.25x3) $18.75 (6.25x3) $37.50 (12.50x3) $187.50 (62.5x3) $375.00 (125x3) $1875.00 (625x3)
Archive Instant Access at $0.004/GB (8 months) $3.20 (0.40x8) $16.00 (2x8) $32.00 (4x8) $160.00 (20x8) $320.00 (40x8) $1600.00 (200x8)
Estimated annual cost $9.25 $46.25 $92.50 $462.50 $925.00 $4625.00

After the first year, costs will go down as you won't have to have all of your assets in the most expensive tier for 30 days. For comparison, below is a breakdown of estimated costs, assuming that 15% of the assets will be at the Infrequent Access and 85% will be at the Archive Instant Access. Keep in mind the second year may have you at a different storage level, depending on how many assets have been added.

Estimated storage costs for after the first year
Storage 100GB 500GB 1TB 5TB 10TB 50TB
Frequent Access at $0.023/GB (0%) $0.0 $0.0 $0.0 $0.0 $0.0 $0.0
Infrequent Access at $0.0125/GB (15%) $2.25 $11.25 $22.50 $112.50 $225.00 $1125.00
Archive Instant Access at $0.004/GB (85%) $4.09 $20.40 $40.80 $204.00 $408.00 $2040.00
Estimated annual cost $6.33 $31.65 $63.30 $316.50 $633.00 $3165.00

It most likely won't be thousands of dollars per year, but it could add up depending on how frequently the assets are accessed, how much storage you have, and what you add along the way.