The CERN IT department provides a centralized service to backup CERN-owned server machines containing critical data in the computer centre.
The IBM Tivoli Storage Manager product (TSM) is currently used to provide this function.
The service excludes all individual desktop machines as these are expected to store the users files on one of the NICE/Windows or Unix/AFS services (which are also backed up). The target machines are the large scale, central production file, database servers and mail servers.
Machines using the backup service will, on a regular basis, send their changed data to the backup service over the network. A copy of these files is then kept on disk or tape. Restores can be performed by the service managers via command line or GUI interfaces. The service manager is responsible for the the client software installation and configuration, as well as for verifying the completeness and correctness of the backups.