Departmental Filestore

Due to the recent restructuring of IT Services under Support Process Review the way the Departmental file store service is managed is changing. 

Please contact the IT Service Desk if you need assistance or want to have new space allocated on the Central Filestore System.

What is happening to Filestore?

Improvements are taking place to improve the way the University deals with data.   The aim is to present data to users in one place, with far less complication in permissions, drive letters and locations.   To achieve this we are in the process of moving as much Departmental and User data as possible to our large resilient file system.  The aim is to replace the existing mixture of servers in departments and previous IT Services systems with a managed, consistently presented file storage system, offering split site resilience, end user recovery and much more space.  As part of this process, departments may already have and be using new space allocated from this system; or we may be working to migrate your existing data stores to the service.

Filestore service - allocation & organisation

All departments should aim to store the majority of their Non-Research data (Administrative, shared, resource data etc) on the Central Filestore Services.

How should I access the main University Filestore?

From this path you will see only the folders and data storage areas that you have access to.  

How can we get space on the University Filestore?

Make you request via the IT Service Desk.   We will normally provide 2TB volume space for use.  It is possible to have more than one 2TB volume logically presented under a Filestore link - i.e.  \\ads.bris.ac.uk\Department\School  or \\ads.bris.ac.uk\SupportService\Team.   We will discuss individual requests to ascertain the best way forward.

What is happening to the DeptFS filestore  (\\dfs1\deptfs)?

The DFS1 filestore is deprecated.  Any new file storage space is presented via the University Filestore at \\ads.bris.ac.uk\filestore.

Data that is currently stored on older systems (i.e. SATABeast discs) will be migrated to the new system.   Where possible, we will update DFS1 links to look at the new storage location until Zonal IT Support Staff can update user machines to use \\ads.bris.ac.uk\filestore paths to minimise any disruption to end users.

Guidelines for Data Storage on the ADS Filestore

Users have their own Univesity wide 60/150GB+ Personal space within our data centre Filestore (the O: drive). As far as possible no individual user folders should be created within the wider Filestore. Further information regarding best practice for data and folder structure organisation can be obtained from the Systems & Operations team.