Skip to main content

System Backup Procedures

For security purposes, detailed internal procedures for systems administration and backup/recovery procedures are restricted to internal SWAN use. This overview is provided to share with our members the basic structure of these processes.

SWAN maintains backup and recovery procedures for all SWAN supported systems. Recovery procedures are reviewed and tested quarterly through restoration of test systems from production backups.

High-level overview of backup procedures

  • Core services are managed by a major IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) cloud provider, which are geo-redundant
    • In the event the local data center goes down, an instant recovery snapshot is used to bring up another data center.
  • ILS is backed up every four hours 
  • OPAC full system backups are scheduled nightly after 11:30 P.M.
  • SWAN internal support services are also backup up daily
  • Retention cycles for backups are:
    • Daily - 180 days
    • Weekly - 12 weeks
    • Monthly - 1 year
    • Instant recovery points - 7 days
  • Once a month, a copy of ILS and OPAC backups are offloaded to local storage which is immediately disconnected from the network.

Recovery testing

Backup/recovery testing is scheduled annually and testing quarterly by means of test server refresh from production backup.

Credentials and staff access

  • Only SWAN IT employees have access to systems as identified in their job descriptions.
  • Each SWAN staff member with system responsibilities has unique credentials and roles assigned, as required for purposes of systems administration.
  • Backup administrator credentials all require multi-factor authentication.
  • SWAN uses an enterprise password management system.