| 1.0 Purpose
To provide College faculty and staff with an overview of backup services offered by Electronic and Computer Services (ECS). Backup services provide for recovery of files that may have been accidentally erased or for disaster recovery in the event of a system or disc failure. Furthermore, departments and individuals are strongly encouraged to adopt their own system backup policies and procedures. Short of having departmental or personal system backup services, individual may purchase these services from the University’s Information Technology Services (ITS); the fees for ITS backup services are annual charges that are based on the amount of required storage space.
2.0 Scope
The College’s primary servers, Dean’s Office servers, and some twenty departmental and organizational servers managed by ECS are backed-up nightly. Faculty and staff files stored on departmental servers are included in the nightly backups.
3.0 Policy
The College of Engineering’s backup services are limited to core College and departmental servers. These servers are backed-up according to a cyclical schedule according to the following procedures:
- Faculty and staff are encouraged to store critical proposals, documentation, or administrative files on their departmental servers
- Complete server backups are completed once a month
- Differential backups are performed nightly
- Monthly backups are retained for a minimum period of two (2) months; files accidentally or purposely deleted longer than the retention period are permanently lost and not recoverable
The backup philosophy relating to other than ECS managed servers is as follows:
- Faculty and staff are strongly encouraged to develop a backup strategy for their desktop and/or laptop computers.
- Faculty and staff have the option of purchasing backup space from ITS
- Faculty and staff have the option of procuring disk drive or tape backup systems that they or their departmental Technical Contacts may manage
Any question as to the scope of addresses to be given unrestricted access can be directed to ECS at support@engr.psu.edu.
4.0 Enforcement
ECS personnel will ensure that all College critical servers and departmental server managed by ECS are backed-up according to this policy.
5.0 Revision History
Last updated: 10/11/2006
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