COE Disk Farm Request and Service Level Agreement

Mosaic Computing

Sept 30,2013

The Disk Farm service is targeted to fulfill a need of the COE faculty who are doing research projects and need a network location to store and back up large amounts of data.

Storage on the disk farm must not include any data that is considered to be sensitive or confidential in nature. Please see the following for University policies:

311 / Data and Information Access and Security
311.1 / Credit/Debit Card Processing Regulation
311.2 / GLBA Information Security Program Regulation
311.3 / Password Regulation
311.4 / Peer-to-Peer File Sharing Regulation
311.5 / Personal Information Security Breach Notification Procedures
311.6 / Regulation on Security of Electronic Individually Identifiable Health Care Information under HIPAA
311.7 / Regulations on Information Systems Security
311.8 / Regulations on the Use of Social Security Numbers
311.9 / Regulation Regarding Third Party Data Subject to Contractual Access Restrictions

At the end of each semester we will report to the Dean, the CFAC and the Department Chairs the service usage patterns (which department is using this service, which projects), how well the service meets the needs of the researchers, and the overhead associated with continuation of this service.

  • An AFS based daily disk to disk backup occurs at 12:10 am daily and creates a mirror of the stored data. The daily disk to disk backup window is retained for 24 hours; recovery of data older than 24 hours is not possible from disk to disk backup.
  • A weekly tape backup will occur each Saturday.Weekly backups are on an 8 week rotation, that is, the backup window is 8 weeks. A full backup that is retained for 2 years is done at the end of each semester(Spring & Fall). There will beno daily incremental backup to tape.
  • Requests for new large amounts of disk space or for expanding of the disk space for a research project requires a written justification that will be reviewed and approved by the Department Chair and forwarded to the Director of the Mosaic group for a review and consultation with the members of the CFAC. The request should identify the project name, project researcher name,project begin date, project end date, expected disk space requirement, funding code for the disk space charges.
  • Any project that exceeds 500 GB of active disk space allocationwill require a one-time non-refundable funding assistance of $1000/TB per yearfor the duration of a project from either the department or the faculty researcher. This funding assistanceis intended to cover some of the costs for additional hardware, maintenance and future expansion of the disk farm.
  • Any project that requires more frequent full back up than the weekly backup will be evaluated by the Mosaic System Administrator. It is not feasible with the technology in place today to do frequent backups on large data sets. Additionally, more frequent backup will require a one-time non-refundable funding assistance of $1000 for the duration of a project.This funding assistance is intended to cover some of the costs for additional hardware and support.
  • All new disk space allocation requests will be placed on hold if the disk space request exceeds the amount of space available in the Disk Farm.
  • When a project expires the associated disk space allocated for the project willbefreed and returned back into the pool of available disk space. The faculty sponsor and the department chair will be notified via email at least 30 days prior to the expiration of the SLA.Arrangements to remove the data off AFS, if needed, will be the responsibility of the primary project researcher. Keeping an expired project active on the disk farm will require a recurring non-refundable funding assistance of $1000/TB for each year of extension as well as $1000 per year for the support of the needed backup.

Definitions:

Active disk space: the actual amount of disk space available to a user on AFS to hold their data or programs. For example, allocation of 100GB of active disk space to user allows the user to store 100GB of data on that volume.

Backup disk space: the amount of disk space that holds a mirror image of the active disk space. This is a characteristic of how AFS works. For example, an allocation of 100GB of active disk space to user allows the user to store 100GB of data on that volume and the system incurs an overhead of an additional 100GB to store the cloned volume that AFS provides on a nightly basis.

Please complete the following information for your specific disk space requirements and save this document as a PDF fileafter you complete entry into all the fields. Send the saved PDF document to

Project Information:

Project name:
Project description:
Project location:
Faculty sponsor name:
Project start date: / Project end date:
Funding code in Banner:
Amount of Space Requested:
Mosaic Login of Volume Owner (who controls access to space):

Project Administrator Contact Information:

Name:
Mosaic Login:
Telephone Number:

Review and Approval Required:

Department Chair name:
Date approved by Department Chair:

To be completed by Mosaic Disk space administrator:

Space allocation completion date:
Space allocation Information:

If you have any questions or need any assistance with this form please contact the Mosaic System Administrator by calling Terry Rhodes at 704-687-5568 () or contacting Jack Stein at 704-687-1941 ()

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