Storage: Backups (CommVault)

What are SDSC CommVault Backups?

The SDSC Research Data Services team offers CommVault, which is a highly customizable backup system, to UC San Diego campus users, members of the UC community, and UC affiliates.

While CommVault truly shines as the backup solution for a group of several workstations, making it an ideal backup choice for collaborative research labs, CommVault also thrives in an enterprise backup role. Other advantages include:

  • Low maintenance – after a quick installation process, the CommVault service successfully backs up data, requiring little to no user attention
  • Highly customizable – collaborate with the SDSC Research Data Services team to determine backup frequency, retention, and directories in order to balance cost and recovery capabilities
  • Pay on use – rather than assessing costs based on licenses for each workstation, with no leniency for users with small amounts of data, SDSC CommVault users pay only based on the amount of data that is backed up.

How Much Do SDSC CommVault Backups Cost?

CommVault costs are applied in two stages: at a premium to the data stored on user systems and at a reduced rate to the data stored as backups in SDSC storage facilities.

ServiceUnitUC RateExternal Rate

User Data
User system data that needs to be backed up

TB/month$91.67/TB/month$132.9215/TB/month
Retained Data
Compressed backup data saved on SDSC storage
TB/month$35.17/TB/month$50.9965/TB/month

Example: 1 TB of data that needs to be backed up with 1 copy of the data saved in SDSC storage systems for a UC user would cost $91.67/month + $35.17/month for a total of $126.84/month. Please contact services@sdsc.edu for a custom quote based on the amount of data that needs to be backed up, the number of backups that need to be retained, and the retention period.

Recharge rates are subject to change with approval from the UC San Diego Recharge Rate Committee. IDC is exempt for UC San Diego users of SDSC Cloud, effective October 10, 2017.When developing budgets for new research proposals, if the eligible cloud computing services are associated with the extramurally funded research, please include these costs in the modifications made to calculate the modified total direct costs (MTDC) so that IDC costs are not added to the proposed budget. Read more about MTDC. Please see https://blink.ucsd.edu/technology/cloud/indirect-cost-exemption.html for more details.

How Do I Get SDSC CommVault Backups?

Send a request to the SDSC Research Data Services team at services@sdsc.edu.