Backups, Restores, and CD Requests

Backups

Backups are done each night at 2am. A selection of these tapes are kept on-site for many years. Over time, backup tapes are archived according to the following schedule:

• One month
  A daily picture of the system is saved for one month. A restore can be done from a specific day during the month previous to today.

• One year
  A weekly picture of the system is saved for one year. A restore can be done from a specific week during the year previous to today.

• Three years
  A monthly picture of the system is saved for three years. A restore can be done from a specific month during the three years previous to today.

Restores

To request a restore please send email to problem@cs.brown.edu, keeping in mind the previous information. Restore requests are queued and attended to within three days (we try to have them done for you as soon as possible). If there is a problem finding what you have requested, you will get a message requesting more information. It will speed the process up if you are as accurate about the window of time the restore can be done from as possible.

Snapshots

The CS Department uses a Network Appliance F760 file server to provide network file service to both Unix and Windows clients. This server has a feature known as snapshots which allows for online file recovery of recently (currently you can recover anything from the last three weeks) changed or deleted files. For details, see the Snapshots Page

CD/DVD Requests

A CD/DVD burner available for use by CS ugrads is located in the SunLab (rm 143), and two for use by faculty and grad students located in the 3rd and 4th floor copy rooms. If you need help or would like tstaff to write a CD/DVD for you send email to problem. Please split the data into 650Mb directories (re: CD1, CD2...) for CDs or 4.7Gb directories for DVDs. Also, please include the date and time when the data will be ready to write.
**DVDs can only be read on another DVDs drive, but CDs can be read on either a CD or DVD drive.