Disaster Recovery Backups

Disaster Recovery Backups are a service that ENG IT can provide for servers or domain-joined computers in order to protect against system failure and fatal errors. These are complete system backups meant to preserve advanced configuration (such as drivers, registry entries, network settings, etc.) and are different from normal data backups. In the event that the computer does undergo a disaster, we can perform a restore to a backup from the last two weeks.

Configuration of Disaster Recovery backups is appropriate for the following use cases:

  • Vendor-configured systems
  • Instrument controllers
  • Instruction or infrastructure servers
  • Mission-critical systems with difficult to reproduce configurations

For all other BU-owned systems if just data backup is needed, Code42 can be used.

To provide this service to Windows and Linux systems, Engineering IT leverages the Veeam backup platform with the settings listed below. Monthly full backups can noticeably affect the performance of a system. Changes since the last full backup are tracked through nightly incremental updates that should not have a significant effect or interfere with normal use.

  • Backup target: Entire computer (including all storage drives, but not USB devices)
  • Full backups schedule: Performed on the first Sunday of every month at 12:30 AM
    • If the system is unreachable at this time, the full backup will be performed during the next possible nightly update window
  • Incremental updates schedule: Performed nightly at 12:30 AM
  • Backup retention: Backups are kept for 2 weeks

In order for the backup service to work, please ensure the following:

  • System is powered on and networked at all times
  • ENG IT is notified of any errors that occur by submitting a ticket

To enroll a system for Disaster Recovery Backups, please use the Sensitive Computer form.