How much storage space do you give your users?

[b_m]

Hi

Could people post up to date details of the storage space that they give their student users please?

I'm regularly being told that students need to delete stuff- but when I check their user areas they're actually very reasonable, and there is nothing there to really be deleted.

The opinions seems to be that students can "make do" with user quotas of 50Mb (max, they start smaller than this!) but because they have roaming profiles, the various application settings files regularly run at between 20/ 30Mb, especially now our Art department have started using Photoshop on a regular basis, which seems to save a file called Brushes.psd to all users profile. On occasion, I have seen these files alone to be 25Mb.

I feel now that the days of student using only a few Mb as a user area have now gone. They (rightly) expect to use photos and audio in work, and they will take pictures etc using digital cameras, which of course produce much bigger files now than they did a few years ago due to the increased quality.

I'd be interested to know what different schools are now allocating as user area quotas-and also how you're backing this up in a manageable and affordable way.

Thanks for your time.

B-M

[bossman]

All staff = 500Mb
All students = 300Mb

Some serious staff who are IT literate 3Gb

All this is for their personal use as they also have staff subject areas which collectively add up to 2Tb

This is on our new system which has room for growth as our old system had just 348Mb of storage space left (timed it just right)

This is all backed up using Backup Exec 12.5 D2D2T Diskbox 4Tb storage and then to LT04Autoloader tape storage with magazine which holds 24 tapes each holding 1.2Tb each compressed.

[plexer]

We had one staff member with 37gb

Ben

[bossman]

@plexer:

Bet he was using it for downloading free apps (hehe! torrents) ;D

[gaz350]

Our librarian had a 250gb home folder. She does lot of radiowaves though.

[clareq]

Some of our sixth form students who study art and photography have a 2Gb limit - and can easily fill it! Most students have less though.

[dgsmith]

We start Yr7 on 50MB and work up each year in increments of 50MB (so yr8 get 100MB, yr11 get 250MB). Staff start on 1GB and we're flexible as long as any requests made are justified. Unlike student accounts where we feel justified to check what they have saved if they request more, we respect staff privacy so just trust them generally and this works well.

[b_m]

Thanks to all posts to far.

I forgot to ask, could people also mention whether they are using static profiles, or roaming profiles- and if roaming do the files that make up the profile count as part of the students quota?

Thanks again.

[CyberNerd]

I think it's around 5.2GB per user + around 7GB of mail.
Google docs of course. Non Google docs (psd etc) are limited to 1GB IIRC

Local limits (shared CIFS drives) are more like 1.2GB for KS5 down to 700MB for KS3.

[pete]

There's no limit per user (as such). It's a case of "the space is there for you to use, but don't take the michael or do stupid things like having multiple copies of the same directory structure". If they're using a lot of space and it's all legitimate school work, then that's fine - if it's not they'll be asked to tidy. It all balances out - some kids (Art and Engineering students, I'm looking at you) are heavy consumers of storage, but the Maths, English and Geography kids aren't. So long as I don't get a year where everyone takes GCSE and A-Level art, it's all fine.

My rule of thumb is I know roughly how much an average student will be using in a certain year group. I then look at those kids who are outside the curve to see if it's legitimate or daftness.

Mandatory profiles with certain things redirected to the userdir.

Disclaimer: I do have filtering set up on the fileserver that prevents the saving of certain file types. So media studies (for example) keep their .dv files on their own server.

[joe90bass]

year 7 = 150MB
Year 8+9 = 200MB
Year 10+11 = 300MB
6th Form = 500MB
Staff = 3.0GB

I'm always under pressure to increase these quota's (Damn DIDA!!), however if all users used the full quota they already have we'd be well and truly out of space.........

Backup - Autoloader drive with 3 x 200GB tapes (compressed). I suspect we'll be needing more tapes soon, ideally we could use a new backup solution but with no budget...........

[plexer]

@plexer:

Bet he was using it for downloading free apps (hehe! torrents) ;D

Nope she just had it filled up with loads of stuff from uni etc... oh and a copy of boardworks which I'm not sure about.

Ben

[cpjitservices]

Students 50MB Quotas, Admins 5GB, Tutors/Lec's 1GB, Guests 50MB

And we are seriously struggling for space.....................

[dhicks]

I'd be interested to know what different schools are now allocating as user area quotas-and also how you're backing this up in a manageable and affordable way.

For the storage servers I set up last summer, I aimed to give each pupil 8GB, the same as you can get on a cheap USB stick these days - I figured that would do as a basic minimum. More would be available for older pupils (sixth form) and staff. We had one 16TB (ish - 9 2TB disks in RAID 5, anyway) live file server with a hardware RAID array backed up by a second 22TB (12 2TB disks) software RAID machine - the second server larger than the first so we could save historical versions of files.

We also had separate servers for images (4TB, I think) and video (another 4TB, also with a four-port network card on its own dedicated network, for serving an 18-machine "media" classroom).

Building a storage server is simply a case of buying a bunch of harddrives and sticking them in a case, there's not an awful lot to it. The above can be built for around £5,000, including a decent (£1,000-ish) hardware RAID card and a couple of spare 2TB drives to allow for fast replacement of any disks that fail in your RAID array.

[Mr.Ben]

I'm giving Students 3GB Hard Quotas and Staff 6GB Soft Quotas. I also regularly approach Staff members and help them to archive data to DVD (Generally Photos and Media from previous years).

Much like Banks I look at it in 'fractional reserve' terms - Not all Staff and Students will want all of there quota at the same time, so I can lend extra space to other users if it is justified. However I do appreiciate that given the current state of the Banks that may well be folly!