Transactional archiving of an electronic document

An apparatus, comprising:

• a server transaction manager application stored in a memory on an archival portal server, where the server transaction manager application is configured for transactional archiving of an electronic document between multiple interconnected archive units of a distributed server network in geographically-dispersed locations in order to store identical copies of the electronic document in two or more of the archive units at the same time, monitor a persistent state of the archiving of the electronic document, and reconcile the archival system if an error occurs between a start of a transmission of the electronic document and a permanent archiving of that electronic document, where the archive units of the distributed server network allow uninterrupted access from a client machine to at least one of the copies of the archived electronic document even if one archive unit location is not accessible, where the server transaction manager application is coded to cause an archival portal server in the distributed server network to send a five-step, two-phase commit protocol to a selected set of transaction manager instances resident on remote archive units, wherein the server transaction manager application is also coded to reconcile the multiple interconnected archive units if an error occurs between the start of the transmission of the electronic document and the permanent archiving of that electronic document in any of the multiple interconnected archive units;
• a permanent data storage location in each of the archive units configured to store the electronic document;
• and
• a temporary data storage location in each of the archive units configured to store the electronic document during the two-phase commit protocol.