Backing Up Your LATTE Course
Why Back Up?
LTS makes regular backups for the entire LATTE system. In order to additionally safeguard your course from human error (such as instructors or assistants accidentally deleting or modifying files and assignments), LTS recommends instructors do their own backups of their courses during the semester and store the backup files outside of LATTE. A backup file saved outside of LATTE can serve as your personal record of your course's online resources, and may be used to transfer your course to another school using a compatible version of Moodle.
Suggested times to do a course back-up:
- Before you make significant changes to the course settings
- After you have done a lot of work prepping your course for the semester
- Whenever you have finished entering assignment grades into the Gradebook
- Before you experiment with a feature of LATTE you haven't used before
- At the end of the semester, to save all student work and activities
- Whenever you want extra peace-of-mind
Anticipated for Fall 2010, a backup file will only be saved on LATTE for 60 days before it is automatically deleted. In order to keep a long-term archive, instructors must download the backup file and keep it within another location.
How to Create a Back-up of Your Course
- Click the “Backup” link in the LATTE course Administration Block.
- In the next screen, leave everything checked.
- Scroll to the bottom of the screen. Under “Metacourse” choose “No” (unless your LATTE course combines multiple class sections, in which case, leave as “Yes”).
- Click the Continue button.
5. On the next page that appears, click the Continue button. LATTE will begin working on compiling the backup. Wait until the process is finished, which can be a minute or so.
- After you see the words "Backup completed successfully" click the Continue button again.
- LATTE will direct you to your file directory, where you will now see a .zip file starting with “backup” in the “backupdata” folder.
- Right click the name of the backup .zip file and save it to your computer to keep a local copy outside of LATTE.
- Click on the name of the course in the upper left hand corner to return to your course’s homepage.
Instructor-Created Backups Saved on LATTE Are Deleted after 60 Days
In order to ensure LATTE’s long-term operation, LATTE will only keep instructor-created course backups that are less than 60 days old. Older backup files will be automatically deleted from LATTE once a day. Backup files can be found in the "backupdata" folder within the Files directory of the LATTE course.
Instructors can still make backups of their courses whenever they choose, but they will need to store these backup files in another location outside of LATTE for long-term archiving. If instructors should need to use backup files to restore a course, they should contacat the Help Desk for assistance.
LATTE Backups by Library & Technology Services
In addition to backups made by instructors, Library & Technology Services (LTS) has a backup schedule for LATTE.
LTS makes regular backups that allows LTS to restore LATTE data in the event of a system problem. In case of catastrophic failure of the system, a once-a-day backup is made of LATTE. LTS cannot restore single courses from this backup.
Individual courses are backed up each morning by LTS, and the backups are only saved for 48 hours before being deleted. Individual courses are also backed up every week (currently on Sundays), and are kept for 2 weeks before being deleted. If an instructor needs to have a course restored because of accidental corruption of their course, their options are to use a copy of the course that is 1 day old, 2 days old, up-to 1 week old, or up-to 2 weeks old.
Restoring Your Course from a Backup File
Contact LATTE Help at latte@brandeis.edu or x6LTTE for any restore requests.