Purpose
To ensure against catastrophic data loss, the college provides disaster recovery measures for the CLAS IT and CLAS Dean’s Office servers, which are hosted on UFIT infrastructure. Other college units that manage their own computer servers are encouraged to implement similar protective measures.
Scope
Our disaster recovery strategy is for site recovery following a catastrophic hardware or software failure. This strategy does not provide fault tolerance nor for recovery from user error.
Policy
Data Backup
CLAS IT uses UFIT provided services to backup Virtual Machines (servers) and File Storage.
Virtual Machines (servers)
UFIT conducts nightly backups of all Virtual Machines in the event of a disaster. Their backup schedule is to provide seven days of backups for each VM.
File Storage
Disaster Recovery on our file storage (S: drive, R: drive, etc) is handled via the combination of Data Replication and File System Snapshots.
Data Replication means that the data on the storage system is replicated between two different locations. UFIT Data Replication is split between the East Campus Data Center (ECDC) and the data center in SSRB. If a catastrophic event were to occur, such as fire destroying a building, data on the storage systems with data replication enabled is protected.
All of the storage provided (funded) by CLAS IT has data replication enabled. However, some departments that are purchasing storage from UFIT do not have data replication enabled and that data may be in jeopardy.
File System Snapshots create a point in time “backup” of all files on the server. In the event of deletion or corruption, these snapshots may be restored quickly and easily by individual users, please see the how-to “How to Recover Files and Folders in Shared Drives” for more details on individual restorations.
The snapshot schedule for the S: drive is one snapshot every 6 hours for 5 days, then one snapshot every day for a week, then one weekly snapshot retained for 8 weeks, and one monthly snapshot that is retained for 6 months. This schedule effectively allows for the recovery of most files within six months of deletion/corruption. The snapshot schedule for various R: drives, and other storage pools used for large data sets, is one daily snapshot retained for 7 days.
Snapshots are taken daily between midnight and 2AM, the six hour snapshots are taken at 12:15AM, 6:15AM, 12:15PM, and 6:15PM. For more details on the snapshot schedule please see UFIT File Hosting.
Units with legal data retention or increased backup requirements will need to provide alternative backup strategies. CLAS IT will work with individual units to provide an acceptable backup method.
Data Restores
In the event of a server failure, the latest VM archives will be used to reconstruct the CLAS IT computer servers to the last known functional state. System downtime is not defined, as CLAS IT does not provide a guaranteed HA (highly available) system.
Data restoration from UFIT storage systems can be performed by individual users, please see the how-to “How to Recover Files and Folders in Shared Drives” for more details on how to restore your files. If you need assistance with recovering a file, please open a ticket promptly at CLAS IT Service Requests. A delay of more than 7 days will likely result in the data being lost.
Mail Restores
As mail for campus is handled by UF Exchange, CLAS IT does not manage mail restores.
In the event of message loss, contact CLAS IT immediately and we will open a ticket on your behalf. Certain message deletions are reversible, and may be recoverable.
Last revised: December 10, 2024.