What Do You Mean by "Secure" Storage?

Protection against Data Loss

Central storage is located in the compute center of Leibniz Rechenzentrum (LRZ). The compute center is a "dark center", which means that normally humans do not have access.

The data stored on the central storage is first stored on primary system. After at most 60 minutes data will be replicated to another system located in a different part of the compute center. Additionally backups are made to tape several times per week.

Primary and secondary system are protected against simultaniously failure of two hard disks per RAID group. The system uses integrated checksums to identify defect or misallocated data blocks, thus enhancing data integrity.

By automatic so called scrubbing of all files damaged data blocks will be detected and repaired even if the files are rarely used. Users can always use snapshots to restore damaged or deleted files going back several weeks.

For long term archiving can be arranged separatly by the Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) of LRZ.

Protection Against Unauthorized Access

The data in central storage are protected by access rights. In general your data are as secure as your own password. To protect your data further you can additionally encrypt your data.