Centralized File-Storage Backup Services for Distributed Systems
Service Overview
Boston University Medical Campus Information Technology offers an automated, centralized data backup service (via CommVault) to protect workstations, laptops, desktops, file servers, database servers, and e-mail servers. Supported clients include Microsoft Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008, Mac OS X, and a variety of flavors of UNIX and Linux.
Process and Retention Policies
All backups are staged from the backup client machine to the primary backup destination on a high-capacity disk array located onsite in a secured server room. These data are then duplicated to tape media (Ultrium LTO-4). All backup data are encrypted over the network and on all target media using a keyed symmetric block cipher. Because of this configuration, the BU HIPAA team has approved this service to protect HIPAA data on central and distributed clients.
Backups are held in multiple locations. The retention policy of all primary backups (with the exception of e-mail servers) is one cycle. (A cycle is defined as a full backup and all its associated incremental and differential backups.) All primary backups (consisting of full, differential, and incremental backups) on the staging disk array are copied to tape media as a secondary copy. During backups, secondary tape copies containing incremental and differential backups are stored in the tape library located onsite in a secured server room and then moved to a safe also onsite. Secondary tape copies that contain full backup data are sent to a professional offsite tape vault. The retention policy for all secondary tape copies is six cycles. During the months of January and July, the secondary full copies are retained at the offsite location indefinitely for archival purpose. All other backup data will be purged after the retention time has expired.
Please note these specifications may change as this service is refined.
Schedules
All backups occur nightly between 5 p.m. and 9 a.m. (The exception is transactional backups on core database systems which occur every 6 hours.) All file systems backups adhere to the following schedules:
- Monthly full backup: Saves all data on the file system.
- Weekly differential backup: Saves all data changed since the last full backup or the latest differential.
- Daily incremental backup: Saves all data changed since the last incremental, differential, or full.
Service Request
All core infrastructure data, such as the central file server (the “Y” drive), SQL Server, Exchange Server, etc. are included in the backup infrastructure. Distributed systems may subscribe to the backup service.
If you are interested in taking advantage of this service, please send an inquiry to the BUMC Help Desk indicating your storage profile:
- Timeframe to have the backup service started;
- Number of machines to be backed up including, for each
- Machine name
- Operating system/platform
- Number of CPUs on the machine
- Type of data to be backed up: file system, database system, and email system (etc.)
- Names of drives or directories to be backed up
- IP address(es) of the machine
- Physical location(s) of the machine
- Amount of storage (in megabytes or gigabytes) you need backed up;
- Frequency desired for a full backup. (If not specified, the default schedule will be used.)
- Estimated amount of file storage added/changed per day;
- Forecasted data growth
Each request will be evaluated by BUMC IT. Currently, there is no chargeback/costing/funding model established for this service, but it is subject to change in the near future.
Once the request is approved, backup client software (CommVault) will be made accessible through a file share. It is up to the user to make sure the CommVault software is installed and configured properly on the machine. Assistance will be provided in terms of what the installation software asks of the user. If the client computer has a firewall enabled, exceptions will need to be made to allow the backup application to properly communicate with the backup servers.
To make a data restore request, complete the following form.
The time it takes to restore data depends on the date the data was lost and how much data needs to be restored. Since these factors are highly variable, a forecasted estimated time to restore will be furnished in reply to each restore request. Note that in some circumstances, data cannot be restored because it was not backed up while it existed. For example, if a system is backed up every day at 7 p.m. and a file is created at 9AM and then erased at 6:59 p.m. this file could not have been backed up and thus cannot be restored. In this case, there are other data protection provisions outside of the backup process that may permit data recovery.
For more information, please contact the BUMC Help Desk or phone 638-5914.
