iSchool Accounts & Services » Backup
All about iSchool backup (what, who, when, where, how, why)
The goal of backups performed by iSchool IT is to allow you to recover from a hardware disaster and NOT to provide archival backups. Although we do leverage the Windows Shadow Copy service to provide some Previous Versions this is never guaranteed and the number of versions - if any are available - is limited.
At this time we also do not support any kind of backups on Apple Macintosh computers. If you use a Mac and the Apple operating system, please safeguard your date yourself.
WHAT
All the default Windows user folders are backed up which include:
1. your Documents folder
2. everything on your Desktop
3. your Internet Explorer Favorites
We also backup your Firefox Bookmarks.
IMPORTANT - this means that if you store files in some random directory on your C drive that is not listed above they will NOT get backed up.
The following locations and items are NOT backed up (for archival purposes):
1. everything on the N drive
We do sync the contents of the N drive to our backup server every day but this means that if a file is deleted one day then it will also be deleted from our backup server the next day.
WHO
All permanent iSchool faculty and staff that have been issued an iSchool computer will have that computer backed up by a script.
If you are not a permanent employee and/or you are using a checkout or loaner computer and/or your computer is not joined to the ISCHOOL domain then your machine will not be backed up. Please take appropriate actions to safeguard your data!
WHEN
The backup script will run every weekday at a time which you and iSchool IT have determined that your computer will be on the main UW campus, turned on, awake and connected to the wired network.
The script does not run on weekends and will not run if you are on the UW wireless network or off the main UW campus or at home or if your computer is turned off or asleep or hibernating.
WHERE
All files are copied to a primary backup server. Periodically the data on that server is synced to a secondary backup server.
All files are stored on disk and none are copied to tape.
HOW
Files are copied using a robocopy script with the "mirror" switch. This means that ALL changes including deletions are mirrored from your computer to the backup server. The primary backup server is mirrored in the same manner to the secondary backup server.
NOTE - this means that if your files are backed up on day one and you delete a file on day two, assuming a successful backup runs on day three that file will no longer be on the backup server as of day three.
WHY
If we did not invoke the "mirror" switch our backups would grow out of control. For this reason we do NOT guarantee archival backups! If you need to preserve different versions of a file YOU need to copy them to some media like an external hard drive or CD/DVD.
Archival backups (which usually means tape or massive disk arrays) are an expense in hardware and staff hours that the iSchool simply can't afford.
RESTORE / RECOVER FILES
iSchool IT has tried to empower users so that they can restore files themselves. We have done this by leveraging the Windows Shadow Copy Service. Under ideal conditions users can restore previous versions of files from servers and from workstations/laptops running Windows Vista. Instructions are here:
http://help.ischool.washington.edu/faqs/43_123_en.html
Although the Shadow Copy service is successful at saving previous versions of files most of the time there is no guarantee that previous version will always be there. Again, if files are mission-critical YOU need to save them to some media like an external hard drive or CD/DVD.
Last update: 2009-07-16 15:18
Author: Martin Criminale
Revision: 1.5
