Centralized Storage and Backup

For information on research storage, please visit the Research Support page.

For faculty and staff, DoIT provides four storage offerings:

  • Google Apps for Education (GAE) – GAE provides every umbc account holder with 100 Gigabytes of storage. This storage is backed up for disaster by Google but there is no recovery from inadvertent deletion of a file. The storage in Google is validated to support risk level 1 data — non-public data and data subject to FERPA.
  • Box – Box is a web-based file storage system that provides unlimited storage to the UMBC community. The storage is backed up for disaster and encrypted at rest but there is no recovery from inadvertent deletion of a file. The storage in Box is validated to support risk level 2 data — data that may include SSN but not credit-card or health care information. Box can be set up to support shared folders within a group or department. Box provides a Box Sync tool that can be used to keep some or all of your Box data synced with your computer, please note that you may not sync level 2 data (data containing SSNs) with your computer.
  • Microsoft OneDrive – Microsoft OneDrive provides every faculty staff and student have 1.5 Terabytes of space, and more can be requested as needed. This storage is backed up for disaster by Microsoft but there is no recovery from inadvertent deletion of a file. The storage in Google is validated to support risk level 1,2, and 3 data. Level 2 data is data that may include SSN but not credit-card or health care information. While we do have a BAA for OneDrive that allows for Level 3 – health care, or HIPAA protected data, to be stored on this environment, this should not be done without a discussion with DoIT to ensure other policies are being followed for this level of data.
  • Active Directory (AD) – The AD system is managed by DoIT and provides about 20 terabytes of storage for campus use. The AD is designed to be a high-availability system with servers and storage in two separate data centers. The storage can be tightly integrated with Microsoft Windows (and Macintosh with special software).  The storage in AD is validated to support risk level 1 data ( no SSN’s allowed). Data is backed up and the backups do support recovery of individual files that may be deleted, subject to the backup-retention cycle (usually 30 days).
  • AFS – the AFS data service is available to all Unix-based workstations and clients exist for windows and Mac. AFS is used extensively on campus in support of the GL interactive Linux servers, HPCF, and some campus web servers. AFS is validated to operate on risk level 1 data and backups do support recovery of individual files that may be deleted, subject to the backup-retention cycle (usually 30 days).

Many departments or faculty that must maintain their own servers for projects can utilize DoIT’s VMWare cluster. This service provides redundant servers and storage for business continuity and high availability. All of this storage is protected by our backup service. DoIT’s data protection service is hosted by EMC’s Networker enterprise backup and archive software suite that provides data protection for standard files and applications on many leading operating platforms, including Linux, Solaris, Windows, Netware and OS X.  Backups are stored on a dedicated 512 tape qualstar library. When backing up using OIT’s central service, protected data is backed up incrementally every night with full backups occurring weekly.