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Emergency Guidelines for the Campus Community

Safeguarding Essential Files

A Primer from OIT

Safeguarding essential files is the first step toward minimizing downtime in the event of a computing emergency, either on your desktop machines or in the machine rooms at OIT. In order to make good decisions about your department’s essential files, the following information is provided.

Please note: each department at the University has unique operating procedures; please check with your local computing support person or request a visit from OIT’s Software Support team to complete a review of your department’s best practices.

File Backup

  1. E-mail on the OIT e-mail server (imap.princeton.edu) is backed up every night. The backup server makes an archive of any new messages that are in your e-mail folders. The e-mail server does not keep a copy of each message you receive, only the messages on your e-mail account during the time of the back up. Note: Only the messages that are in your e-mail account during the back up are kept; messages you receive and delete on the same day are not backed up. The e-mail servers are in the machine room at 87 Prospect; the backups are kept in the New South machine room.
  2. E-mail that is stored on your local machine (local folders) will be backed up when your local computer is backed up (using TSM, see below). The backups of your local hard drive are kept in the machine room at 87 Prospect.
  3. Other Files (Word, Excel, Access) on your “Common” drive (Novell servers - arelia, arachne, aragon, ariel, arundel) are actually being kept on a Novell server in the machine room at 87 Prospect. The backup server makes an archive of any new or changed documents on your Common drive during the time of the backup. These servers are backed up every night; the backups are kept in the machine room in New South.
  4. Word, Excel, Access Files on your DeSC computer (your “C drive”) should be backed up every night using TSM. However, it is imperative to check with your local computer support person or the Help Desk (x4357) to insure your computer is being backed up.
    1. If your computer is located in any other location on campus, the backup server makes an archive of any new or changed documents on your computer every night; the backups are kept in the machine room at 87 Prospect.
    2. If your computer is located in 87 Prospect, the backup server makes an archive of any new or changed documents on your computer every night; the backups are kept in the machine room in New South.
  5. University business application data (PeopleSoft data, DataMall content, etc.) is stored on servers in the machine room at 87 Prospect. These servers are backed up every night to the machine room in New South.
  6. Files on your department’s web page
    1. If your web page’s address begins with http://web.princeton.edu, the files of your web site are stored on a Windows server in the machine room at 87 Prospect. The backup server makes an archive of any new or changed documents in your website folder during the time of the backup. These servers are backed up every night; the backups are kept in the machine room in New South.
    2. If your web page’s address begins with http://webware.princeton.edu, the files of your web site are stored on a Novell server in the machine room at 87 Prospect. The backup server makes an archive of any new or changed documents in your website folder during the time of the backup. These servers are backed up every night; the backups are kept in the machine room in New South.
    3. If your web page’s address begins with http://www.princeton.edu/~, the files of your web site are stored on a Unix server in the machine room at 87 Prospect. The backup server makes an archive of any new or changed documents in your website folder during the time of the backup. These servers are backed up every night; the backups are kept in the machine room in New South.
Considering these backup details outlined above is necessary for determining the practices your department should employ to safeguard essential files.

File Archiving

Maintaining essential e-mail messages and electronic files in several locations minimizes your department’s exposure to downtime in the event of a computing emergency.   While OIT does archive all your messages and keeps duplicate copies in two locations, if 87 Prospect were to experience a major disaster, it could take up to 60 days for OIT to restore your files from their back-ups at New South. As such, if your business needs require that you access essential files in a time frame less than 60 days, you should consider either storing the original or archiving a copy of essential files on your local server.

  1. If the computing emergency occurs on a DeSC computer (e.g. hard drive failure, a fire, water damage), and that computer has been actively backed up with TSM, OIT’s Software Support team can assist in restoring the files that were lost onto another working computer or to the same computer (after completion of hardware repair) in one business day.
  2. If the computing emergency occurs in the machine room at 87 Prospect
    1. The files stored on your “Common drive” would be unavailable to you. Maintaining a local archive of essential files in this case would allow your department to continue functioning until the Common drive once again became available.
    2. The e-mail stored on your IMAP account would be unavailable to you. Maintaining a “local archive” of essential files in this case would NOT allow your department to continue functioning, as the e-mail server itself would, presumably, be unavailable as well.
    3. The web page files for your department’s web page would be unavailable. Maintaining a “local archive” of essential files in this case would NOT allow your department to continue maintaining a web presence, as the web server itself would, presumably, be unavailable as well.
To maintain a “local archive” of essential files on your “Common drive,” you should designate a certain regular time, say the last Friday of every month, and copy your essential files into an archive folder on your local hard drive (your “C drive”). Each month when you update your archive folder, you should overwrite the previous archive. You should not actively edit and change the archive copies, as this will confuse staff as to where the “real” version of a file is, and what they should be editing. Archives should be a “snapshot in time,” taken, say, every Friday afternoon, stored on a local drive and then overwritten at the next archive time a week later.

Getting Ready to Archive

  1. Starting at your computer’s desktop, open the My Computer icon by double-clicking it.
  2. Open the Common drive by double-clicking it.
  3. Next, open your My Documents folder by going back to your computer’s desktop and double-clicking on it. Arrange these folders so they are side-by-side on your desktop. You can resize the windows by clicking on the lower right-hand corner of the window and moving the mouse while you drag it to change the shape of the window. Your desktop should look like this:

Common Drive on left, My Documents on right

Creating an Archive folder on your computer (in the My Documents folder)

  1. Right-click (that’s the mouse button you don’t normally use) in the My Documents folder and select New -> Folder.
  2. A new folder will appear and its name will be highlighted. Name this folder ARCHIVE.
Archiving the essential files from your Common drive
  1. The last step is to simply drag-and-drop the essential files that live on your Common drive into the ARCHIVE folder you created in your My Documents folder. To start this process, right-click an important folder from your Common drive and drag it with your mouse over the ARCHIVE folder and then let go – select Copy from the mini-menu that pops up. This will create a copy of the folder, instead of moving it. This is an important point: do not move the folder; rather, copy it to the ARCHIVE folder.
  2. You can repeat step one for other essential files and/or folders, or you can use the Edit menu and Select All the folders in the Common drive and use the mouse (as in step one) to copy them to the ARCHIVE folder. Here you have to consider the volume of files you are asking the computer to copy over the network, and the amount of time it may take if the volume is large.
The process outlined above can be used to archive files from any shared server space (Unix (Samba), Web, NTFileShare, etc.). Please note that this is to archive files from space you use on a server to your local computer. This process should not be done in reverse, i.e., it is not appropriate to copy your local files to a shared server as an archiving mechanism. The shared servers are simply not equipped to handle the volume of files that could be stored on them; this is the purpose of TSM, the campus’ designated back-up software. It is in TSM that the terabytes of storage required to accommodate the campus exist.


©2003 The Trustees of Princeton University. Last modified 04-Mar-2004 11:53 by Robin M. Izzo