Storage & Archiving
BU OneDrive and Personal Storage
MET IT supports a personal BU OneDrive – One Terabyte of space where you can store your “personal work files”. This cloud storage option offers you the following benefits:
- Similar to a local drive “look and feel” when accessing the data;
- Access files from anywhere using file manager, desktop icons, via a web browser or a Mobile App on Windows, Macs, iOS, Android;
- No need to use VPN for accessing files off-campus;
- Ability to restore accidentally deleted files and previous versions of documents (up to 30 days);
- Share files and folders with people both inside and outside BU;
- Synchronize files you store in the cloud to multiple devices;
- BU OneDrive is approved to store Confidential and Restricted Use information.
BU personal OneDrive Quick Start
- Get started with OneDrive for Business
- OneDrive basics
- Create Files and Folders
- Upload Files and Folders
- Delete and Restore Files on OneDrive
- On-line File sharing
BU offers two other personal cloud storage options for faculty and staff. Each option comes with various pros and cons, as well as suggested data types they should be used for.
Please contact us for assistance and details.
SharePoint and Departmental Storage
Each of the Departmental SharePoint sites that are accessible from our MET Central SharePoint site come with shared storage space for your department. This storage space can be accessed without VPN connection from SharePoint itself, or through the sync functionality of your OneDrive software. Please note that your personal storage through OneDrive is separate from the departmental storage through SharePoint. For more information, please visit our SharePoint page.
Data Archiving
The Data Archiving service is designed for secure, long-term storage of large quantities of infrequently accessed data. The service supports teaching, research, and administrative computing. Archived data replicates across two data centers, providing protection against failures.
- Data is hosted in professionally managed, environmentally controlled, and physically secured data centers.
- Information is available for retrieval 24X7, except during scheduled maintenance periods.
- The service supports access from Windows, Macintosh, and Linux/UNIX platforms.
- Information can be retained as long as desired.
- Periodic “snapshots” of the information are taken to ensure data integrity.
Please contact us if you require more details or access.
Backup & Restore
Microsoft online services we use (SharePoint, OneDrive, Teams) achieve service resilience through redundant architecture, data replication, and automated integrity checking. Redundant architecture involves deploying multiple instances of a service on geographically and physically separate hardware. Data replication ensures there are always multiple copies of our data in different fault-zones, allowing critical data to be recovered if corrupted, lost, or accidentally deleted. Automated integrity checking increases data availability by automatically restoring data impacted by many kinds of physical or logical corruption.
For SharePoint, OneDrive, and Teams deleted items are retained in recycle bins for 93 days. After 93 days, all data in the recycle bins is permanently deleted.