ACCRE provides tape backup services to Vanderbilt departments and laboratories regardless of whether they also use the cluster. This is an additional service separate from the backup of home and scratch space on the cluster (see the cluster policy on disk quotas and backups).

The True incremental Backup System (TiBS) is used to backup data for these departments and labs. Currently, an Overland Storage NEO8000 Tape Library is used for the backup of data located remotely. An important advantage of TiBS is that it minimizes the time and network resources required for backups, even full backups. After an initial full backup, TiBS performs incremental backups from the client. To create subsequent full backups, an incremental backup is taken from the client. Then, on the server side, all incrementals since the last full backup are merged into the previous full backup to create a new full backup. This takes the load off the client machine and network. The integrity of the previous full backup is also verified. TiBS support is available for all current operating systems. Please contact ACCRE Administration for more details.

The charges for this service are:

• $100 one-time setup/conversion charge per machine
• $1,000 per year for up to 1 TB compressed data (which includes 1 free one-hour restore per 1 TB per year)
• After free restores:
  1. $100 per hour for time spent on a restore with a minimum charge of $100 per restore per machine per year
  2. $100 per hour for service visits that are in addition to the setup and/or restore visits (or outside of standard support hours)

A few of the most common backup schedules that are being used by current users are:

• Monthly fulls, daily incrementals, and weekly mini merges all retained for 90 days
• Monthly fulls, daliy incrementals, and weekly mini merges where the fulls are retained for 90 days and the weekly and incrementals retained for 30 days
• Bimonthly fulls, weekly incrementals, monthly mini merges, all retained for 6 months

There are many custom schedules that have been implemented based on user request. If you need a custom schedule, please contact us via RT and we will work with you on a custom backup schedule that meets the needs for your data.

The terms of this service are covered by the attached Service Level Agreement.