JupyterCloud: no backups of user data available

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.