Storage Guidelines for Staff

General Principle

The University investment in network storage resources is significant, so personal content should not be stored on University provisioned network storage systems (e.g. Home Drives, departmental file-shares, content-specific network servers, etc). Personal content may be stored on staff workstations as long as it does not affect the performance of the system, but should not be backed up with University backup mechanisms (e.g. Druva InSync desktop backup solution, University USB drives, etc). Personal content may also be stored in staff Google Drives.

Departmental File-shares

Departmental file-shares should only be used for content that needs shared access by more than one departmental staff member, or needs to be stored as a departmental record. Therefore, it should not be used for individual staff content (e.g. staff member's H: Drive is full so they save content on the departmental file-share as well). Departmental file-shares are provided as a collaborative work environment and should therefore be organised as a collaborative folder structure and not contain personalised folders. Once you have been advised that you have access to your departmental share you will need to Map a Network Drive to add it to your computer.

Departmental File-share Consistency

Ideally departmental file-share folder structures should mirror the University's records management classifications and content should be archived and disposed of according to the University's records management general disposal authority. Refer to the University's Record Management Policy for further information.

Home Drives

Home Drives (H: Drives) should be the primary storage space for staff's University-related 'working' documents and content. Local copies may be kept on staff workstations (especially laptops) for mobility and performance reasons, but the H: Drive version should be kept updated. H: Drives should not be used as a backup mechanism for staff workstations (e.g. copying your local 'Documents' folder to your H: Drive) - the University has a desktop backup solution (see Druva Desktop Backup Solution below) for this purpose.

Google Drive

Staff, and students, have access to limited* storage in their Google Apps account's Google Drive. Accessible anywhere on campus and off campus via an Internet connection and web browser, or Google Drive app on most devices, Google Drive is a convenient, no cost storage solution. Google Drive is also excellent for sharing and collaborating on documents using Google Apps.

Google Suite (Google Drive, Gmail and Google Photos) have a 100TB limit for staff, and a 30GB limit for students.

Local Storage

Local storage space is available on staff workstations. This should be the only storage that is used for personal content, as long as it does not constrain the local storage usage for University-related content, or impact the performance of the workstation. If locally stored University-related content is of importance, but is not suitable for storage on departmental file-shares and the staff member's H: Drive, then it must be backed up. The University has a desktop backup solution for this purpose (see Druva Desktop Backup Solution below).

Druva Desktop Backup Solution

The Druva Desktop Backup Solution is used to backup University-related content that is stored on local storage - see Desktop Backup for further details. Content that is stored on departmental file-shares, or staff H: Drives, is already backed up, therefore locally stored copies of files where the primary copy sits in a departmental file-share, or H: Drive, should be excluded from the workstation's Druva desktop backup.

Portable Storage Media

Portable storage media encompasses external USB hard drives, USB flash-drives, and writeable and rewriteable DVDs and CDs. Portable storage devices are not secure, so they should not be used for backing up important University-related content, unless the content is encrypted first. Please note these devices can be a source of viruses so should be regularly scanned and any viruses found should be cleaned immediately. Departmental file-shares and H: Drives can be accessed anywhere on the University's network (and H: Drive access is available off-site using Web Drive), so these network storage facilities are a more suitable means for content accessibility in multiple on campus locations.

Backups and Restores

The content of departmental files-shares and staff H: Drives is backed up daily and retained for 90 days. Druva's backup schedule includes a daily backup by default (however, the backups are user controllable) and backup content is retained for 90 days. Staff requiring content restored should log a job through the Service Desk and include as much detail as possible (eg full file name, full directory location, date/time last saved or modified, etc) in order to allow the file to be easily located and restored as soon as possible. Staff are able to restore any lost content themselves that is backed up with the Druva system (see Druva Restores) and a similar 'self-restore' mechanism for H: Drive and departmental file-share backed content is available (see File Recovery).

File Names

File naming conventions vary across computer operating systems, so we cannot suggest a naming convention that will suit all cases. However, we recommend the use of clear, concise, meaningful file names using letters and numbers only (ie no special characters).

File Sizes

Video files, image files, and files containing images take up lots of storage space. Users should be mindful of file-size issues when generating, storing and emailing these types of files and be particularly careful when using screen-shots in documents and emails as the screen-shot image will be at a high resolution and result in a large file size.