What is the backup policy?
The CS Department systems group performs daily backups on all user-data stored on the three Department file-servers: bach, chopin, and parsons. Backups are performed every day in the very early hours of the morning, This means that if your data is lost on a given day, we can probably restore it to its state at midnight the day before.
WE DO NOT BACK UP DESK-TOP SYSTEMS. With desktop Linux systems this is not a concern, because the network is architected such that user files are automatically stored on the servers. However, Microsoft systems (PCs) put some burden of data-integrity on the user. When using a PC, it is important to take one of three steps to make sure your data is backed up:
- back it up yourself by copying it to your favorite media (thumb drive, DVD, etc),
- copy it to one of the file-servers (bach, chopin, or parsons), or
- map a network drive to your Linux home directory, and do all your work on that mapped drive (via samba file service).
The tape-cycle for daily backups covers approximately the most recent three months. Additionally, an end-of-semester archive is performed three times a year, at the end of each semester, for long-term file recovery.