IIIF Server Cantaloupe

The Arkindex platform needs all images to be hosted on IIIF server.

Teklia recommends the usage of the Cantaloupe server.

Advantages of Cantaloupe

  • Used on large IIIF servers, including Teklia main cluster;

  • Built in Java, code is quite readable, and cross-platform;

  • Can be easily extended with plugins;

  • Supports JPEG2000 (along with most common image formats);

  • Supports retrieving images from a single S3 bucket (or a local source).

Inconvenients of Cantaloupe

  • No official Docker image;

  • Documentation is quite succinct;

  • Does not support multiple S3 buckets out of the box;

  • Memory hungry.

Teklia needs

We have specific needs for our IIIF main cluster, in order to expose large quantity of images:

  • The IIIF server should be able to expose images coming from multiple S3 buckets.

  • The bucket name can be either specified as a subdomain, or as the first part of the IIIF image path.

  • The Cantaloupe instances should be horizontally scalable through Docker containers.

  • The Cantaloupe instances should use libjpegturbo for JPEG2000 decoding.

That’s why we build our own Docker images of Cantaloupe, and make them available freely.