Central Filestore for Networked Desktops
Description of Service
Provision of centrally managed filestore for individual users and groups of users, and backup of this filestore.
Client Groups/Eligibility for Services
All registered users.
Provider Responsibility
- To provide a defined amount of central filestore for all users. All users are allocated a defined amount of personal filestore. Some departments are also allocated shared areas of filestore, according to demonstrated need and the availability of space.
- a) For data held locally on servers: to backup this filestore on a daily basis (Monday to Thursday and once in the period Friday through Sunday);
b) For data held on the SAN: daily snapshots will be taken which are held on disk (up to 28 days). A backup to tape is taken at weekends. - To maintain historical backup tapes and to hold these in a secure place off site, according to CiCS' disaster and recovery procedures and according to audit requirements.
- To run virus scans on a daily basis.
- To allocate user filestore as follows:
Usually 200 MB at registration, except for servers provided specifically for the central support services. Allocations can be extended on request, subject to the availability of space on the server - for students, further allocations require the authorisation, by letter or email, of a supervisor. - To prevent user filestore allocations being exceeded with the aid of automatic filestore 'freezing' software.
- To monitor and manage the capacity of the file servers.
User Responsibility
- To manage their own filestore.
- To back up locally held files on a regular basis.
- To make local copies of important files held centrally.
- For departments with shared filestore, to provide a named individual, and an assistant, to manage the shared filestore and to liaise with CiCS over its use.
Availability of Service
24 hours, 7 days a week.
Service Statistics/Outputs
Filestore allocation and usage statistics.
No. of requests for filestore extensions.
Backup logs.
Virus logs.
Service Measures
More than of 99% of backups will be completed successfully.
Virus software will be updated frequently in line with updates issued from vendor (currently 3 times per day).
Dependencies
Availability of disk space for filestore.
Feedback and Monitoring
Staff survey.
CiCS User Group.
Student Services survey.
Benchmarking
See Section 7 of the Introduction.
Both the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) and the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) provide guidance for disaster recovery schemes.
Exclusions
Filestore on systems that are local to departments.
Filestore on hard disks of individual PCs.
Location of Service
- ICT Support in Customer Services.
- Application Support Team in Technical Services.
Charges
Departments may purchase additional filestore in 250GB increments.
Failure Response
Faults will be investigated within 2 working hours of being reported to the HelpDesk.