Protecting data by storing backups offsite facilitates recovery of vital information or systems following a disruptive event. Texas A&M Technology Services’ enterprise backup service efficiently replicates business-critical data to the public cloud. This distant disaster recovery site provides extra protection in the event of a natural or man-made catastrophic event. Data is encrypted at rest at both the primary and secondary sites and encrypted in flight during transit. The service uses the incremental forever backup strategy, which is more space efficient. Instead of periodic full backups, the incremental forever strategy starts with one initial full backup, then an ongoing (forever) sequence of incremental backups. The service is available for VMWare instances, physical servers running Windows, Linux, and Solaris OS, and can perform application-aware backups.

Getting Started

To request this service, email tamu-it-bcteam@tamu.edu.

Texas A&M University (Part 02) rates are displayed below. See General Computing Rates for TAMUS, Non-TAMUS, and Auxiliary Rates.

* For the safety of your data, Technology Services stores a copy of your data locally and another immutable copy off-site in compliance with Security requirements.

Prevention of data loss is an ongoing concern for all IT administrators. Whether an accidental deletion of a file, a corruption of a database, or the functional loss of a server or the data center, plans, and processes need to be in place to quickly recover a campus member’s environment to full production status. To better support our campus member’s needs for backup and disaster recovery (DR) processes, Texas A&M Technology Services has implemented Rubrik CDM.

Methodology

Rubrik uses a VM snapshot methodology when processing virtual server backups via direct connection to vCenter servers. Backups use the built in VM tagging system to specify what backup tier a campus members virtual server will receive. Charging for the backup service is based on total data storage costs (total GB stored).

As originally designed and scaled, the main function is for DR processes, i.e., the timely recovery of a campus member's environment from a point-in-time to full production status. Long-term retention of data (backups) is generally not encouraged but can be supported by archiving the backup to the public cloud for an additional cost.

Backups

Texas A&M Technology Services uses Rubrik in a full backup followed by incremental mode for creating backup and DR copies of campus members’ server data or a NAS datastore. Additionally, it includes application awareness for products such as SQL or standalone server backup via client plugin installation. To protect the data from incorrect classification, all data processed is treated as "sensitive" and is encrypted in-flight between the client and server and at rest on premise as well as in the cloud. Once backups are completed, they are shipped to immutable cloud storage immediately. Backups follow a compliance model rather than job-based tasks meaning as changes occur in the environment being backed up, those changes are discovered in minutes and will back up data even if the backup window has already begun rather than wait until the next cycle.

Technology Services works with each campus member to set up their backup environment to their needs. Though most settings are customizable, the following settings are default:

• Technology Services initiates setting up the customer environment in the backup system and provides assistance as needed.
• File-level backups are done according to the customer’s schedule.
• Backups are retained for 30 days by default and automatically deleted.

Recovery

Depending on the type of recovery required (single file, entire system), Technology Services can assist campus members in restoring data from available backups. Generally, restore requests are made, prioritized, and tracked through our Incident Management system. An option for customer-initiated restores is also available.