We are developing a plan for the situation where a large server or Unix box fails, or if we have a disaster in the server room. This consists of a weekly full backups, and daily incremental backups. Full backups are retained for one week, and then replaced with new full backups. We are currently creating a backup process that will be available to faculty to backup desktop machines. The recommended method for faculty and students to maintain backups of important files is to store copies of those files on Informer or Grace, which are backed up regularly.
Backups are a copy of the most recent data on a computer.
Their purpose is to get you back where you were in case your machine fails. An archive is a copy of what you had on your computer in the past, so that you can keep a copy of files that were deleted from your computer months ago. The automated backups of the servers are not archives. In contrast with backups, which are intended only for disaster recovery, we will also provide archival services, for long-term permanent storage. We are looking into the possibility of getting an OPIM license for Adobe Acrobat.