Backups of UD-owned Faculty Systems

UD Central IT has provisioned CrashPlan, a commercial backup software, to back up faculty workstations and laptops. This is the preferred method for backing up your University-owned desktops and laptops in your office or lab.

Setting up CrashPlan

• For the time being, an CrashPlan account must be created for you. Contact us through the Help System to initiate this process. Later, accounts will be automatically created for all faculty, although no ETA for that yet.
• Log in with your UDel credentials at https://crusher.nss.udel.edu:4285
• Download CrashPlan from the left sidebar under «App Downloads» A version is available for Windows, Mac, & Linux
• Install CrashPlan in the usual way of installing software on your platform
• Open CrashPlan
  • for server, use crusher.nss.udel.edu
• CrashPlan will start backing up your machine automatically. You can choose what gets backed up by selecting «Manage Files…»

Central Filesystem backups

The main research file server is «dilbert.eecis.udel.edu».

Data Retention Policy

As of January, 2014, the following snapshot policy is in effect. All file systems on Dilbert have snapshots taken at 12PM, 6PM, and 11PM. The latter snapshots are named by the day of the week and kept for one week. Sundays at 1:30AM, snapshots named w1, w2, etc, are taken which are kept for five weeks. Finally, a snapshot is taken at 12:30AM on the first of each month which is kept indefinitely.

Regular snapshots are made of ZFS filesystems which are then replicated to a backup server on a daily basis.

Archives of all user data are made each summer. Unused files, namely files owned by users whose accounts have expired, may be removed at this time. These files will be available in the archives as physical space permits, but not less than one year, typically considerably longer.

Restoring from backup

As always, feel free to request assistance through the Help System for retrieving any files that were backed up via any of the ways listed on this page.