JupyterCloud: no backups of user data available

Backups of user data and files resumed.

Backups of user files and data have resumed again as usual.

Currently no backups of user data is available on the service JupyterCloud. The investigation into the cause of this problem is ongoing but a timely solution is not expected.

What are the consequences?

Currently user data (personal files and notebooks) can not be restored in case if lost.
This is in case of a sever system-wide problem that leads to data loss as well as accidental change to or deletion of data by a user.

How did this situation arise? What can users do for mitigation?

The risks are a) a sufficiently serious problem in GWDG’s storage infrastructure that leads to data loss and b) an accidental deletion or change to data by a user.

GWDG’s storage infrastructure is resillient against common hardware failures, power outages etc. thus making complete data loss a low probability chance, the consequence however would be a loss of all user data.

Unintended deletion or change of user data by a user is a normal fact of working with data. Every user should consider to make backup copies of valuable data, at the minimum in the same account, better yet by creating a zip file and downloading it through the service’s website or by syncing the data with Git to GWDG’s Gitlab service.
Both tools are available through the terminal of a notebook and partially through the website of the service itself.