Information Technology Services (ITS)

UTORrecover terms & conditions

The EIS UTORrecover Backup Service is a private-cloud backup storage solution built on the EMC NetWorker platform. Physical and virtual instances of various supported operating systems can be protected by installing the NetWorker Client agent software and configuring it and any intermediate firewalls to enable the client to reach the NetWorker servers and the servers to reach the clients.

Once connectivity has been established and test backups have been performed successfully, the configuration of a backup schedule is agreed to and configured by EIS. From that point onward, backups should run automatically.

UTORrecover currently protects over 1,000 systems for about 200 customers. Customers are automatically emailed a results summary when backups have completed, either successfully or unsuccessfully. Additional automated alerts are sent describing any failures that may have occurred.

Customers are responsible for reviewing these emails and following up on any failures. EIS makes every effort to ensure that email alerts are successfully delivered, however the customer technical contact must also be aware when an expected automated backup results summary email has not been received.

EIS provides advance notice of scheduled software and hardware maintenance activities and makes all reasonable efforts to promptly restore service and to reschedule backups that may be affected by the maintenance activities.

Customers are responsible for testing the recoverability of their systems and data. Backing up a system is the easy part. Recovering from those backups is the greater challenge. While EIS delivers the platform for making backups and recovering from those backups, system administration is not included as part of the UTORrecover offering. Customers may contract with EIS for system administration support with the System Integration Group or may choose to administer their own systems.

Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Planning are related to and dependant on backup and recovery services like UTORrecover, but neither is accomplished by simply automating monthly and daily backups. The establishment of Recovery Point Objectives and Recovery Time Objectives is essential in the design of any backup and recovery, archival, DR or BCP strategy.

Technical support requests and other enquiries about the UTORrecover service should be sent to backups@eis.utoronto.ca.