About IST backup service
- Ryan Ahn
- Eric Hochban
- Adnan Dzinic (Deactivated)
The Information Systems and Technology (IST) Backup Service is a centrally managed service designed to offer departments, system administrators and faculty a reliable, high-performance, low-cost solution for backing up servers and workstations at the University of Waterloo.
Service availability
The IST Backup Service is available to staff, faculty and departments at the University. Any system (server, workstation, laptop, etc.) that can run Veeam agent software can be backed up. To back up physical machines running Windows, Linux, Unix or macOS operating systems, Veeam Backup & Replication uses backup agents installed on each computer.
Charging rates
The cost for the IST Backup Service is an annual fee based on anticipated usage for the year. Users of the service are charged annually in advance on May 1 of each year. Current users of the IST Backup Service are categorized according to current usage patterns. New users will experience three months of backup service to determine the appropriate category and then will be charged a pro-rated annual fee based on month of enrolment and then an annual fee each May.
Category | Backup size 1 | Annual fee |
|---|---|---|
A - Basic service | Average 2 under 5 GB per month 3 | $150 |
B - Small server | Average from 5-20 GB per month | $360 |
C - Medium server | Average from 20-50 GB per month | $600 |
D - Large server | Average from 50-100 GB per month | $900 |
E - High volume | Average over 100 GB per month | $9 per GB/year 4 |
Pricing notes
Backup size is the size of the data as stored on the backup server.
The volume of backup will change each month, especially with a full backup once every three months. The category of usage is based on average volume over a six month period.
To achieve the pricing of basic service will require some ongoing work and monitoring on the part of the owner or system administrator of the machine. That configuration will involve identifying which portions of the file system should and should not participate in the backup process. Typically, users who choose this option do not backup operating systems and application software that are easily restored to running state, but do backup user data that is difficult or impossible to re-create.
IST would like to discuss backup strategies and pricing for any server which has over 100 GB of backup data per month. This is to ensure that the backup service has adequate capacity to provide the service and to provide stable pricing for the owner of the server.
Backup storage and schedule
When a backup job runs, the data is compressed and copied to a local disk array. Daily backup data is stored on this array until its retention period expires. Weekly, monthly and yearly backup data is copied from the local disk array to a cloud repository after 30 days.
The current backup schedule is as follows:
daily incremental backups (only files changed since the last backup are saved)
a weekly full backup
a quarterly full backup (once every three months)
Data retention
Backup data is kept on disk and in the cloud for various lengths of time depending on the level of backup. This data retention is to facilitate recovery from complete disk failure and to facilitate recovery from various specific dates in the past.
Subject to review of actual data loads, the current schedule for deletion of backup data is as follows:
daily backups are deleted after one week
weekly backups are deleted after 5 weeks
quarterly full backups are deleted after 12 months
Data and file recovery
To recover data from a backup please submit a ticket to the IST Service Desk
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