Size of User Profiles in Google Enterprise

[GaryN]

Good Afternoon,

 

I am a senior technician at an All-through school (From Nursery to A-Level age range). Currently we use Google for our e-mail/education platform and more specifically, in the secondary age range ASUS Chromebooks in a 1:1 scheme. This has been running successfully for a few years now.

 

Last year we decided to deploy Chromebooks into our primary site, buying at first a bank of 32 devices in a trolley to be used by classes at a time. What we have started to see is that the devices HDD's are filling up very quickly. To get around this, we have made some changes within our Google domain to force downloads to users google drive and also done a few remote user profile removals from devices which helps out in the short term. I have been doing a lot of reading around this and another solution to this is to ensure that the option to not store local profiles on devices is turned on. This was currently turned off so we are thinking of enabling it to hopefully solve the problem however there are a couple of unanswered questions for us:

 

1. Firstly, why has this just started becoming an issue now? Speaking to a couple of external technical support contacts we have they seemed to give the excuse that there had been a large update that google had deployed recently that was causing HDD's on devices to fill up a lot quicker than usual and that after you have done the first remote profile removal, this should not be an issue going forward. We did this last week and have already had a few devices come back to us with the problem re-occuring.

 

2. Secondly, when looking at some of the local profiles of users that use these devices, some of them are really quite big in size, almost around 1GB which we feel is rather large considering these devices only have 32GB of storage space, 18GB or so of which is being taken up by the system. This then leaves only around 10 users being able to login to the device before it fills up again. Does anybody know what would be causing users local profiles to be so big? Considering this is a cloud based service/device this does seem puzzling! And is there any way to shrink this down?

 

Any thoughts or hints would be greatly appreciated!

[atkins]

See this URL: https://www.schooledintech.com/how-to-remove-profiles-from-a-chromebook/

 

There's an option to not save user profiles on Chromebooks, hopefully this would help you somewhat

 

A

[Danp]

I have just changed our setting for shared devices to not keep profiles on the device (the last option on the link above). This has helped a huge amount.

[TechMonkey]

Do be warned, we found this had some interesting consequences. Some apps wouldn't work and it gave everyone a 2GB hard quota on the device, which wasn't enough to install the apps we were pushing out. We think it also meant that every app had to be installed at every login, rather than just the first person.

 

Google do not recommend using this setting.

[Primus]

Please log it with Google support - numerous schools seeing the same issue but they're having difficulty tracking down the issue.

 

What extensions are you pushing out?

[paulkerton]

Chromebooks should automatically remove the content of older profiles on the device. Oldest (as in longest since last logged in on device) goes first.

[GaryN]

Thank you for the reply, we have reported this to google however no direct reply as of yet, I cannot say their remote support service is the best I have come across. In terms of apps and extensions, we currently are pushing out around 30 in total that span across the different OU's, is this potentially too many?

[Primus]

Thank you for the reply, we have reported this to google however no direct reply as of yet, I cannot say their remote support service is the best I have come across. In terms of apps and extensions, we currently are pushing out around 30 in total that span across the different OU's, is this potentially too many?

 

I've found having lots forced install slows log in down.

 

I don't suppose you're pushing the NetSupport School extension are you?

 

Could you PM me your case ref number and I'll forward it to someone at Google who's looking into this.

[j224]

We're also seeing this issue and I've been in contact with Google but they've just asked me to send logs. The trouble is, when the disk is full, it can't produce the log file!

 

We're only pushing out a couple of apps, so it's not that causing the problem.

 

I reckon it's a bug with the way it handles profiles. We've had the Chromebooks for 6 years and only recently had this. After doing a full wipe of a Chromebook, it doesn't take long to fill up again.

[TMBS]

I don't suppose you're pushing the NetSupport School extension are you?

 

Is there an issue pushing out the Netsupport extension on Chromebooks? We were looking at using this...

[Primus]

Is there an issue pushing out the Netsupport extension on Chromebooks? We were looking at using this...

 

One aspect Google were looking at was whether NetSupport was filling profiles with lots of screenshots due to Google also changing the redirection of screenshots.

[j224]

We don't use NetSupport. I don't think screenshots are the cause of the issue.

[jlyle29]

One aspect Google were looking at was whether NetSupport was filling profiles with lots of screenshots due to Google also changing the redirection of screenshots.

 

We are experiencing this issue also, started happening after summer break.

 

We do not use NetSupport.

[DavR]

I've just had this reported to me today, first time since we got the devices.

 

Initially I had the erase all local user data setting turned on, but disabled it a while back, I think because we were starting to use apps on them, which would mean a fresh download each time.

 

Perhaps I'll need to re-enable this setting, and they'll have to put up with the re-downloading. I'll have to test the performance impact, but if it's either that or running out of space repeatedly....

[j224]

It's ridiculous that Google is taking so long to solve this. It's clearly a widespread issue and they should be able to replicate it themselves.

[DavR]

I don't suppose anyone has come across a way to force screenshots and videos taken using the Camera app to store on Google Driver, rather than local storage?

 

I'm a little wary of using the erase all local user data setting if it's also going to lose this data.

[Primus]

I don't suppose anyone has come across a way to force screenshots and videos taken using the Camera app to store on Google Driver, rather than local storage?

 

I'm a little wary of using the erase all local user data setting if it's also going to lose this data.

 

You used to be able to, Google in their infinite wisdom removed this ability.

[jthompson]

Encountering this now, too. Even after turning on the option to remove local user data last week, I'm still seeing the majority of devices reporting as 100% full, in spite of them showing up with recent activity most days.

 

Can the devices get too full to clean up after themselves, I wonder?

[jthompson]

Actually, I think the reason for our Chromebooks not clearing out old profiles is that the setting to erase local user data instructs the device to erase the profile when that user is signing out. All the other profiles created on the device when the setting was to not erase local data will remain in place until each of those users next signs in and then out of the device. I guess a powerwash reset is going to be the quickest way to clear out the dozens of older profiles on there. Edited October 21, 2021 by jthompson

[paulkerton]

We previously set all of our devices to wipe profiles on sign out. We've switched one set to keep profiles now as a test. So far, so good!

[jthompson]

We previously set all of our devices to wipe profiles on sign out. We've switched one set to keep profiles now as a test. So far, so good!

 

When you say so far so good, do you mean that the ones set to keep profiles are self-managing properly and not filling up?

[TechMonkey]

One issue we noticed is that, when you set to wipe profiles, each user is set a quota. Something like 2GB, and this is used very quickly. There is no way we have found to edit this limit. So removing the wipe profiles may help in the short term. I still wish ChromeOS installed apps per device, rather than per user, so once the initial login happened, everyone else already had the app.

[paulkerton]

One issue we noticed is that, when you set to wipe profiles, each user is set a quota. Something like 2GB, and this is used very quickly.

 

Its 50% the amount of RAM on the device. So if you have 8GB RAM its 4GB. etc.

 

I still wish ChromeOS installed apps per device, rather than per user, so once the initial login happened, everyone else already had the app.

 

It's something they've been looking at from conversations I've had with people at Google, but I don't think its quite so simple as we'd all like it to be!

[sunny88]

We too have this issue. Since July 2021 lots of devices filling up. Have done multiple resets. Advise from our support is to change the setting to clear up profiles on sign out even though googles advise is not to.

I guess we can only wait until google release another update to maybe fix the issue. The setting to clear up is not really practical. Apps download on each login again. Not an issue for schools with fast internet, But the ones with slow speeds, this will cause issues.

It is not only managed devices, a user in our workplace uses a Chromebook as a standalone and they have also reported issues since the summer.

[DavR]

It's something they've been looking at from conversations I've had with people at Google, but I don't think its quite so simple as we'd all like it to be!

 

+1 for device based deployment pls!

 

Google, like everyone else these days, seem to be assuming a 1-to-1 device ratio, and more and more settings and app deployments are per user (see also: O365 activation licensing).

 

They don't seem to remember that some key audiences, like schools, still use shared devices such as trolleys of Chromebooks and classroom suites of desktops that are shared by hundreds of users.