# Archiving your course

Education spaces (courses) have a well-defined lifecycle:

* first the space is created
* then content is added, to prepare teaching or a workshop,
* then the session(s) take place,
* finally as student activity wanes, the space is no longer actively used.

To optimize storage usage, education spaces are archived after a set date to free up resources that are rarely used any more. This is conceptually similar to [resting spaces](/administration/space-management/resting-spaces.md), but specific to education spaces and managed automatically.

## What space archival means

1. Application and personal data in student instances will be backed up to cold storage to free up storage space for use in other spaces.
2. Application and personal data can be [restored from snapshots](/features/snapshots/restore-a-snapshot.md) in archived spaces, after which data can be downloaded and application(s) can be started again.
3. After a few days' grace period, restored instances in archived spaces are re-archived. To access the data or application again, the appropriate snapshot must be restored again. This can be repeated as many times as necessary.

## Notes for space archival

After a space has been archived, students can still access data and run applications in it. However, archived spaces are not meant for everyday use: instances with restored snapshots are periodically re-archived, without taking safety backups. Restoring a snapshot in an archived space should serve two purposes: either to download data or to [distribute](/features/nuvolos-basic-concepts/distribution.md) files/tables/applications to another space.

## Assignments in archived spaces

When a space is archived, the **Assignments** view is still accessible from the sidebar (it moves to the bottom of the navigation list), but assignment data is shown in a read-only, dimmed state:

* Assignment rows are grayed out to indicate the archived state.
* Action buttons (e.g. submit hand-in, delete, edit assignment) are hidden.
* Clicking on an assignment name does not navigate to the assignment detail page.

This ensures that assignment history remains visible for reference, while preventing any modifications in an archived space.

## Finding archived spaces

By default, your archived spaces are not shown in the navigation panel. To view them, open your Space dropdown menu and turn on the Archived toggle.

Only your 3 most recent archived spaces will be shown in this menu with greyed-out text. To view and manage your full list of archived spaces, click **List all archived courses** at the bottom of the dropdown.

## Resuming work in an archived state

You can resume work by [restoring from a snapshot](/features/snapshots/restore-a-snapshot.md).

## Configuring space archival

You can set the desired archival date at space creation time by selecting a date in the Space archival date field.

The space will be archived automatically overnight after the set date.

You can also edit the desired archival date anytime before it has been archived. Navigate to the course overview, and click on the info button next to the space's name. This brings up a side panel where the Archive by date can be edited.

## Instance re-archival

To access data in student instances of archived spaces, each student can restore past snapshots to the current state. They will be able to work in the instance as before, however after a 3 days grace period, the contents of the current state will be deleted again.

{% hint style="warning" %}
When an instance is re-archived, all files and folders in its current state are deleted permanently. Don't upload new, valuable data to archived instances, as no automatic backup will be taken before re-archival!
{% endhint %}


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