Overview:

This document describes Northeastern State University’s (NSU) policy for backing up computers and other storage systems located in both the Broken Arrow and Tahlequah campus machine rooms.  Specific computers for which departments have requested central backups are also covered by this documentation. 

Definition:

Hard Disk backup is the copying of data from a Personal Computer (PC), server, or any other storage medium to a storage disk in order that it may be restored at a later date. 

Deduplication is a technology that allows for repetitive bytes of data to be exempted from storage allowing for far more storage and much higher compression ratios. 

The Backup Process:

Backup clients are assigned to a specific group within the backup software.  These groups are scheduled to backup at specific times, normally at night during off hours. 

For groups containing PCs and servers requiring standard backups, full system backups are done every Friday or Saturday and incremental backups are done daily. 

Clients needing specific databases such as SQL backed up use a special module added to the software.  Backup schedules for clients with these databases follow the same schedule as the standard backup clients. 

Network attached storage filers have their own respective groups.  Full backups take place on Saturdays, while incremental backups are done daily. 

Mail archiving is backed up to a specific folder on the mail server and then, once a quarter, archived for five years on the hard disk. 

Data from all servers and PCs are backed up to a hard disk.  The hard disk is communicated from the clients through the backup server to the hard disk. Data is deduplicated as it is coming into the hard disk. 

Data Retention:

Data retention varies depending on the backup client.  The backup server, network storage and bootstrap data are kept a minimum of three months.  Mail archive data is kept a minimum of five years.  All other data is kept a minimum of one month.  Disk management is handled by the backup software.  When data on the disk passes the retention time, it is marked as recyclable and removed from the disk during once a week disk cleaning.