Features of the Online-Storage SoFS

Take advantage of the many advantages of SoFS: 

• Online Storage:
  • You can access your data online anywhere, anytime. 
• Recovery of your data:
  • You have the option to recover accidentally deleted files. 
• Common documents:
  • Work on a document with multiple people directly in SoFS. 
• Security against failure and data loss:
  • The RRZK secures and maintains the infrastructure of SoFS, which is designed for the highest possible availability.
• Privacy:
  • For particularly sensitive data (including personal data), the storage in SoFS must be refrained from in principle. Should such data nevertheless have to be stored in SoFS, the data must be encrypted in advance. In this case, encryption, including key management, is the responsibility of the person who stores the data.
• Data stored in SoFS is stored at the University of Cologne. The data is stored unencrypted and the transmission of the data is unencrypted (except when accessed via WebDAV). 

Types of Storage-Areas

The use of SoFS distinguishes between 3 types of areas: private, public and SoFS-storage for institutes. These are designed for a different type of use. 
The rough classification allows to distinguishes  without any further settings between data...   

• which only can be accessed by yourself
• you want to share with other users on the system
• which should be proccessed together in a fixed working group (a project)

Data Protection

SoFS saves also older versions of files automatically. There are different backup-intervalls. 

First of all, a backup of the changed files (“snapshot”) is created during the usual office hours (every 4 hours: 8 am, 12 am, 4 pm and 8 pm). These backups will be overwritten each the next day. 

Example: A file is not originally recoverable if it was created after 8pm and accidentally deleted or modified at 11.30 pm on the same day.

A file that is changed today at 7.30 am is backed up at 8 am. If you make further changes during the day, which later are seen as undesirable, you can recover the state of today 8 am until tomorrow 7.59 am.

Additionally there is a daily backup at midnight. These daily backups are canceled over the period of a week.

Example: a file, created on a Tuesday, is accidentally changed on the following Thursday. The desired version, which was backed up the night from Wednesday to Thursday, can be recovered up to a week later.

The backups, which are created in the night from Sunday to Monday, are saved much longer. 30 backups of these are created. Thus, you can access on the older versions up to 29 weeks (more than a half year)- but only with a granularity of one week.

Example: The 5^th of May 2014 was a Monday. In October, you can still restore old versions of a file which was modifies in may, but only with the state of 5.5. , 12.5. , 19.5. , 26.5...

The access to these saved versions of files is (as a comfortable way) only possible with Windows.