Backups

Backups

Backups are performed daily and they are retained for one year. All data is backed up onto two tapes. One tape remains on-site and the other is sent off-site to a tape vaulting facility. Tapes are sent out every two weeks. All GS-ITS maintained servers are backed up according to the above statements. If you have confidential or sensitive data, you should store the data encrypted or contact GS-ITS to discuss possible options.

If you would like to see which hosts and volumes are currently being backed up, you can subscribe to the gsits-backup-report e-mail list. Reports are sent out daily. If you do not want to receive the daily notifications, but you would still like to view the reports on the web, you can disable "Mail delivery" using the mailman web interface.

Archives

GS-ITS also offers a data archiving service. It differs from the backup service since after the data is archived, it's removed from disk. All data is archived onto two tapes. One tape is stored on-site and the other is sent off-site to a tape vaulting facility. If you need to retain data for compliance purposes, but do not have enough space to keep it on disk, you should consider taking advantage of this service. Please contact GS-ITS for more information.