Data Storage

Cybersave yourself! Look at the Data Protection Policy page how to handle data securely.

Home Share from C&CZ

With your science account you automatically receive a home directory.

The home directory is automatically backed up by C&CZ with a daily, monthly and yearly backup and is general accessible :

home directory on C&CZ linux servers (shared using nfs protocol)
H: drive on C&CZ managed pc's running windows (shared using smb protocol)
on any other host you can mount it as a network disk :
You need to attach the network share using your science account :
- Windows: \\<Server>\<ScienceAccount>
  Note: when asked for credentials with a login popup window, and this popup window shows it is using a different windows domain than B-FAC,
  then you can also specify the windows domain in the user field as: B-FAC\<ScienceAccount>
- Linux/Mac: smb://<Server>/<ScienceAccount>
Where <Server> is one of :
- pile.science.ru.nl
- bundle.science.ru.nl
- pluri.science.ru.nl
To find out which you need to use you can login to https://dhz.science.ru.nl/index?Language=en where you can see at the main page which server to start under the heading "Home disk at".

quota

The space is limited by a quota. Questions about the size and used space of your quota can be answered :

on linux by using the 'quota -sQ' linux command on one of the linux servers lilo1.cs.ru.nl or lilo2.cs.ru.nl of C&CZ.
on windows you can see the soft limit of your quota by looking at the properties of the home share.

If you are over quota than you automatically get the following email from C&CZ:

 Warning: You are over quota on your network home partition on the server pile.science.ru.nl.
 Above you find the disk usage, the number of saved files and the quota limits.
 You are adviced to clean up disk space by removing redundant files.
 To see how the disk usage is distributed over the directories, use:
  
   Using Linux  : du -sk * .??* | sort -n
   Using Windows: WinDirStat  (on managed PCs it can be found in S:\\windirstat)
   
 For additional info: please contact C&CZ, postmaster@science.ru.nl, phone 53535.

A bigger quota can be requested by contacting one of the scientific programmers

Example: check quota on linux

 jan@lilo2:~$ quota -sQ
Disk quotas for user jan (uid 4111):
Filesystem  blocks   quota   limit   grace   files   quota   limit   grace
pluri.science.ru.nl:/home-pluri-30/thchem
             382M    489M    538M            2938   50000   55000

 jan@lilo2:~$ du -sh ~
382M    /home/jan

Thus the user jan :

has 382 Megabyte in use scattered over 2938 files
has a quota of 489 Megabyte and a maximum number of 50000 files
for a limited time he is allowed to use upto 538 Megabyte and 55000 of files
so the user jan is not over quota

RU-folders

Saving and sharing data safely within RU can be done via RU file folders. These folders meet the information security requirements and are therefore suitable for safe storage of all kinds of information.

Overview of RU-folders:

File Folder	Contents	Access
Personal folder (U-drive)	Personal files	Employee (automatic)
Department folder	Department information	All department employees (automatic)
Work group folder (for employees)	Files for employees from various departments/units	Application via de ICT-shop. Owner manages the access rights of other employees
STD work group folder (for employees and students)	Files for employees from various departments / units with the added option of granting access to students.	Application via the ICT-shop. Owner manages the access rights of other employees
RUbox	The minutes of formal meeting structures	Application via email. How see the page.

Information

The ict website has an overview page RU file folders: Saving and sharing files safely with RU colleagues.
Details of how to use the RU-folders is described at radboudnet website. Unfortunately that information is only in Dutch.
Workgroup folders are created by request to the ICT-shop. Here you can find workgroup manuals.

Mounting RU-folders

To connect to the RU-folders follow the manuals at: https://www.radboudnet.nl/bestandsmappen/migratie/department-folder-migration-project/manuals-support/

The share is called OU for department shares but is called u123456 for the personal folder for u123456.

To mount your personal folder user:

share: \\cnas.ru.nl\u123456 for windows or smb://cnas.ru.nl/u123456 for linux/osx
user name: u123456
password: your ru accounts password

Eg. on the OS X command line do:

  mkdir -p /Volumes/u123456
  mount -t smbfs //u123456@cnas.ru.nl/u123456 /Volumes/u123456

Backups

Source: https://www.radboudnet.nl/bestandsmappen/achtergronden/back-ups/

A backup is made every night. These files are kept for 60 days. All changes are also saved per hour; these files are kept for 2 days.

To recover a file from a backup, proceed as follows: Go to the Explorer and right-click on the file or folder from which you want to restore something. Choose the "Restore previous versions" option. This gives you access to all stored security copies of your folders and files and you can copy or restore the desired version.

Safety RU File system

Source: https://www.radboudnet.nl/bestandsmappen/achtergronden/veiligheid-ru-bestandssysteem/

Within the campus access to file folders is possible via RU workstations and via the campus network with its own devices. Outside the campus access is only allowed via a VPN connection. Data.

Within all types of folders of the RU file system, data can be stored unencrypted. Storing critical data (personal data) in a departmental folder is not recommended because this data is rarely relevant for all members of a department. Critical data should preferably be stored in a workgroup folder. It goes without saying that (critical) research data must be stored in a workgroup folder. It goes without saying that (critical) research data must be stored in a workgroup folder

SURFdrive: cloud storage from SURF

IMPORTANT:

data on SURFdrive isn't back-upped, it only provides online storage you can synchronize with on multiple clients anywhere. It is advised to backup the SURFdrive with one of the backup solutions at this wiki's Backup page.
university policy forbids you to put critical data on SURFdrive. Read the Data Storage Policy!

URL: https://www.surfdrive.nl/en

SURF introduces SURFdrive. SURFdrive is a personal cloud storage service for the Dutch higher education and research community, offering staff, researchers and students an easy way to store, synchronize and share files in the secure and reliable SURF Community Cloud.

SURFdrive is the alternative to commercial cloud storage services like Dropbox and now available to Radboud University staff. All RU staff have up to 100 GB of secure storage on the SURF community cloud, and can share the content of this storage with other SURFdrive users as well as guest users. You can also synchronize your data on SURFdrive across multiple devices. SURFdrive is primarily intended for storing work-related files. Please do not store personal files on SURFdrive.

In the SURF community cloud, every user has a virtual drive on which files can be accessed anytime, anywhere. This personal cloud storage service has been specially developed by SURF for employees and researchers in the Dutch higher education and academic research sectors. Data is stored within Dutch borders, the users remain the owners of their own data, and SURF itself provides no information to third parties.

SURFdrive is user-friendly and accessible from any standard computer, smartphone or tablet. Files can be uploaded and shared through a simple web interface: http://www.surfdrive.nl.

Select 'Radboud University' and log in with your u-number and RU password.

To sync data on SURFdrive with data on your workstation, you need the SURFdrive client. Use the request form on http://www.ru.nl/surfdrive to request the client for your RU workstation. If you do not have a PC or laptop administered by the ISC, you can install the software yourself after downloading it from SURFdrive.

More information: https://surfdrive.surf.nl and http://www.ru.nl/surfdrive

Why and features

Why SURFdrive?

Secure file storage
Log in with your own user name and the password of your institution and obtain 100 GB free of charge right away.
Anywhere access no matter where you are.
Anywhere and anytime access to your files: from your smartphone, your tablet or your laptop.

Functionalities https://www.surf.nl/en/services-and-products/surfdrive/surfdrive.html

offline synchronization, ensuring that users have access to their files at all times
easy and secure file sharing within the higher education and research community
users can invite guest users to share documents
optimized for smartphone and/or tablet use
99.5% availability, with 99.9% availability from mid 2015
30-day deleted file recovery
14-day recovery of older versions of a file
doesn't supply a backup facility, so make sure you make backups of data in your SURFdrive

SURFdrive complies with Dutch and European privacy legislation. For example, SURFdrive's conditions of use ensure safe usage, whereby users retain ownership of their own data. All data are securely stored within the Netherlands. Furthermore, SURF does not share information with third parties.

SURFdrive encrypts all data transmitted over the networks. But it doesn't support server side encryption! The Data Protection Policy therefore states that you must encrypt sensitive files when stored on SURFdrive. Critical files aren't allowed to be stored at SURFdrive even when they are encrypted!

Data on SURFdrive isn't back-upped!

SURFdrive doesn't supply a backup facility, so make sure you make backups of data in your SURFdrive.

You might think that SURFdrive is a backup facility because it gives you 30-day deleted file recovery and 14-day recovery of older versions of a file, however it isn't a decent backup for the following reasons:

A decent backup solution would keep backups longer then 30 days.
A decent backup solution gives you the ability to restore your whole dataset to an older backed up version. However SURFdrive doesn't support this, it only allows recovery per individual file. An example:
- if a virus or ransomware cripples all you data in your SURFdrive, then :
  - the crippled data will be synced to all locations where you access your SURFdrive
  - you can only restore older versions per file, so you can only recover manually per file which is undoable when you have gigabytes of files
For calamities SURFdrive has an offsite replication of all data. However just replication isn't enough for a decent backup. In case your laptop gets stolen and by coincidence there is also a fire at the data-center then your data is still stored securely on a second site. This basically means that the current version of your data is stored redundantly. But if your data is corrupted by a virus or ransomware, then it doesn't help that your corrupted data is redundantly stored on multiple sites. Backup means that you can easily restore to an older version before the corruption happened!! SURFdrive doesn't provide this.

So we can conclude:

data on SURFdrive isn't back-upped, it only provides online storage you can synchronize with on multiple clients anywhere. It is advised to backup the SURFdrive with one of the backup solutions at this wiki's Backup page.