Description
All CALS OIT managed Windows and macOS computers have been offered CrashPlan (formerly Code42), the Cornell licensed backup application. Below are aspects of this service for you to be aware of.
If you are off-campus and have issues with CrashPlan impacting Internet bandwidth, please see this article about addressing network issues.
NOTE: CrashPlan, as deployed and configured by Cornell and CALS OIT, is intended as a disaster recovery tool. This means that it is intended to support data loss that is noticed relatively soon after it occurs, i.e. hardware failure, theft or loss of the physical device, or corruption/malware that makes the computer unusable. CrashPlan is not configured to support use cases such as; recovery of files that were deleted months ago, etc. If you have an issue that is not part of our use case, we would be happy to check backups and see if we can help you with any recovery needs you may have.
Expectations
Things you should know about CrashPlan:
- Your install of CrashPlan is managed by CALS OIT in collaboration with CIT.
- CrashPlan is offered to CALS OIT managed Windows and macOS computers based on Endpoint Categorization status. If you do not have CrashPlan, ensure your computer has been Categorized.
- Our configuration of CrashPlan does not backup:
- cloud-hosted files (e.g. Box, DropBox, OneDrive, iCloud, Google Drive). If you need these files backed up, let us know and we can discuss how to do that.
- virtual machine hard drive files (VDI, VMDK, VHD). If you need these files backed up, let us know and we can discuss how to do that.
- Cornell email messages in Office 365 or Google accounts, including .pst or .ost files (these are the locally synced copies of Outlook). The best practice is to not backup these files. If a restore is necessary, the data will be downloaded from Office 365 online.
- Our configuration of CrashPlan will only backup your primary (OS / Operating System) drive. This will typically be "C:\" on Windows and "Macintosh HD" on macOS. If you need to backup additional drives, please put in a ticket (with your computer's name and the drive you need to backup) and we will set that up for you.
- If you have folders on your computer that you do not wanted backed up, create a folder called "AG-NoBackup" (ideally on your desktop, where it is easy to find) and put files to be excluded in that folder.
Backup Failure Alerts
You will receive an email when your backup is three days out of date (Warning) and again at five days (Critical). See sample email below. To complete a backup, simply turn your computer on and connect to a network. You can check status of your backup via the CrashPlan icon in your taskbar (Windows) or menu bar (macOS), CrashPlan is a blue bordered folder icon.
See this CrashPlan article for more details about backup status.
Monthly backup status reports
You will also receive a monthly e-mail around the first of each month detailing the backup status of all the computers for which you are the primary user. If you notice:
- computer(s) listed for which you are not the primary user
- computer(s) that are are the primary user of are missing from the report
- computers are not completing backups (and have been on and online recently)
Submit a ticket so we can help you resolve the issue.
