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Backups & Archiving

Posted on | By Ali Daker

About NAS Backup

On ETH NAS (Network Attached Storage) daily backups are drawn.

Filesystem Snapshots

Daily snapshots of files are taken on ETH NAS shares.

  • Snapshots can be seen as a daily copy of files at a random time
  • Snapshots are kept back for 6 days.
  • Files from snapshots are directly recoverable by the end user.

Actual Backups

Likewise to snapshots, daily backups are taken on ETH NAS share.

  • Backups are kept for up to 90 days back
  • Backups are drawn daily at a random time
  • Files from backups are not directly recoverable by the end user.

For file recovery contact servicedesk-baug@id.ethz.ch and specify

  • Exact path and name of the file or folder to be restored.
  • Exact date and time of the version to restore.
  • Exact date and time when the data has been lost/changed/corrupted.

File Recovery from NAS Snapshots or File Server

Windows

File explorer offers a GUI method to recover from snapshots:

  • Browse to the folder of the missing file
  • 2ndary click the folder, select “Properties…”
  • Select the “Previous versions” tab
  • Select “Open” on the appropriate snapshot and restore selectively what you need

Our system creates snapshots of your data on the Server or the NAS as the Following

  • S4D-FS File-Server (Folder Redirection)

Every : 07:00 / 11:00 / 12:00 / 15:00 / 19:00 / 23:00
There will be stored up to 64 versions of all your data.
There are versions stored for up to 16 days back.

 

NAS Shares (common and home drives \\d.ethz.ch\groups\baug\ibi)
  • once a day at : 13:00
    There are versions stored for up to 6 days back.

Do only use “restore” if you’re sure it will not overwrite something newer or better…

 

Snapshots are available in hidden folders named “.snapshots”:

UNIX/Mac

This basically works on any system, including Windows.

  • Change to the share where the missing file/folder was
  • Change into the snapshots folder: “cd .snapshots/\@GMT-YYYY.MM.DD-hh.mm.ss”

  • Browse through the files like normal and copy the wanted files back to NAS

There’s a list of folders containing daily snapshots from the past 6 days:

  • Mac

As above (UNIX). Typically the mounted NAS Shares can be found in “/Volumes”

Alternatively in Finder:

  • “Menu”>”Go”>”Go to Folder…”  (<shift><command><g>)
  • Then enter the path, e.g. “/Volumes/example_share/.snapshots”)

 

Archiving

Data which is no longer used on a regular basis should be moved to the LTS tape archive.

Data repository for departments: Saves compressed unstructured “Storage worthy” data. The optimal size for the data is between 10 and 200 GB.

https://www.ethz.ch/services/en/it-services/catalogue/storage/lts.html

Category: Storage