Home drive size limits - what are yours?

[tarquel]

Hi all

 

After noticing a mention of home drive/dir size restriction, I thought it would be handy to have a thread on the matter.

 

So really, post with:

 

a) If you have quota's on the users home dirs

b) If you do, how much and is it the same for everyone

c) um....any thoughts on how to keep file sizes down (thinking about this topic http://www.edugeek.net/index.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=1261 with regards to how large the HDD's we have to buy are

 

I'll add a poll later on/tomorrow - PM me any option you think should be in the poll i.e. "HDD - dont think we use them" lol

 

Cheers

Nath

[Ric_]

Home drives have limits:

Years 7 to 12: 100MB hard limit

Years 12 to 13: 200MB hard limit (althought few are anywhere near this)

Staff: 600MB hard limit (although a couple don't have this limit cos they had too many files when I did the migration to Server 2003... and are due to lose some files - they have been warned!!! :twisted: )

[wesleyw]

Around 30mb for the years 7 - 11

Around 50mb for the 6th form.

 

No limits for the staff! (I know scary!)

 

If the pupils need more space our policy is just to give them it for a specified amount of time then drop it back down.

 

I think the 100mb for Pupils would be a good idea and during the changeover next summer I'll implement that instead!

 

We no longer support floppies in the school and sell USB memory sticks to the pupils, with this in mind there isn't really much point in Home Areas for us seeing as the smallest USB pen we sell holds more than the home user area limits.

 

 

Wes

[webman]

Every pupil has 30MB limit. This is increased as-and-when, usally to the end of Year 9 and into Year 10.

 

Staff get a default of 100MB.

[StewartKnight]

No limits, as there are only 500 students, I have I huge hard drives!

[DMcCoy]

1000 students. Years 9-11 get 100MB, 12-13 get 200MB. Staff are unlimited, but this will change soon as the backup is reaching capacity and some staff have nearly 3GB!

[OverWorked]

No limits - yet.

 

I have a 100GB partition for 300 pupils + 60 staff. After 2 years it's about 50% full. I keep a spreadsheet of its usage and update it when I remember. It's filling up at an ever increasing rate, so I'll have to impose quotas probably next year. I'll probably make it 100MB for pupils and increase it for those who need it.

[MkII]

How do you set quotas anyway? - I set a GPO on students and it screwed up the host PC's! [well, some of them].

 

I asked students to reduce thier file areas to 100mb. All but 30 managed it. The offenders we're 6th form and Y11s so 2/300 would suit them. Staff I have no restrictions on. The IT-Co-ord. has 5.5Gb, another IT Teach 4Gb and another 2Gb. Other staff are all below 300Mb, most next to zero.

[DMcCoy]

How do you set quotas anyway? - I set a GPO on students and it screwed up the host PC's! [well, some of them].

 

 

As I changed to 2003 about a month after it came out, there was not a working version of subinacl (or which ever tool set the owner). I do not like owner based quotas and prefer folder based (one thing I liked about novell!). I use Nothern quota server 2003 on the main file server. It can also block extensions from being saved in set areas. I have *.exe blocked from being saved from student directorys at the moment

[ChrisH]

Properties of the drive and quotas tab to turn them on.

[fooby]

we have three 1-terabyte NAS's. So we dont set any limits for anyone. The NAS devices are win2003 hp boxes, we also have an sql (sims) server with a terabyte storage, I just built the webserver with a terabyte in it. most other servers have about 100gb in them. Total storage (1TB nas is 700gig formatted) is probably about 4 to 5 terabytes. One NAS is a backup of others. We plan to buy a 2TB NAS for more backup storage to make the smaller ones file stores.

 

fooby

[ChrisH]

... and what do all you people with all this data use for off site backup?

[OverWorked]

Off site backup!!??

 

Errmm... Good question!

 

It's something we should do, but don't. I gave up using AIT tape for the curriculum area as it was too unreliable and expensive. I just built a NAS device out of an old PC and large HDDs, and backup to that.

 

I used to backup the admin stuff to tape as well as disk, but the tape drive died. I have a replacement, and will replace it next week, now that you've reminded me.

[DMcCoy]

I backup to AIT-3 at the moment, I have a LTO2 library to change to. I currently keep most tapes off site at home. With the library, due to having to import and export, I will probably keep a selection of the tapes off site.

[E1uSiV3]

At me old place it was 20MB a year, staff keep stuff on their laptops (long story) and offsite backups were 2 LTO1 drives (1 for students profiles and the main server and 1 for everything else)

[john]

All users of all ages (year 3-13) get 50MB to start, and then upped as needed, after a good going through home areas to remove cat and dog pics, pop stars, music etc.... Upgrading to Server 2003 R2 soon and going to put the filters on as well as the new Soft Quotas option for most users, as well as my new RAID 5 array (74GB disks). Set the starting quota to 100MB with a 30MB soft overflow to them all. Biggest quotas belong to Admins and house masters, were all over 1GB

[siuko]

All pupils and all staff - No Limits

 

I have alot of 73Gb SCSI hard drives and generally place 1-2 year groups on each one, with the Year 10 and Year 11 seperate as they seem to grow more.

 

Never really ran into any space issues and just watch for hard drive space available and if major jumps in backup space are used up I check the pupil areas using Treesize (nice program).

 

Its probably less hassle that way than having to constantly explain quotas to pupils and staff and having to force them to delete things.

[Ric_]

@siuko: It's good for the kids to get into the habit of using quotas - the curricula (is that a word?) state that the little darlings need to be able to manage their files and keeping an eye on disk usage is one of the most important things IMHO. DIDA also specifically mentions archiving and compressing files to save space.

[adamyoung]

since upgrading to windows server 2003 we havent imposed limits.

 

We have 120GB storage between our 260 ish staff and 1600 students (office network is separate and runs novell)

 

It was suprising how unlimited space hasnt been abused and most of the save areas have all work related content.

[Ric_]

Our user areas aren't abused and most people seem to have very little - it's nice to know that they can't go mad though

[Quackers]

No Disk Quota's 1 server with 200 gig in it for home directorys.

 

Its been in for 2 years now, with last years, year 11 still on and its only using up 120gb with shadow copies on too. So until space becomes a problem i do not intend to use quota's its gives you more issues.

[DMcCoy]

You guys are lucky. I have plenty of users using photoshop who have no concept of resolution or dpi. Got a few students with over 1GB. Staff are the worst, some have almost 3GB now. Backing up roughly 550k essential files every night atm. Pictures from digital cameras are the worst offenders it seems, people don't know that you don't *have* to take all your pics at 5 megapixels. :/

[john]

Sounds highly familiar - these new digi cams are the new "virus" of computer networks, when staff realise that a picture at 2 megapixel will make an A3 print well will be the best day of the year! (newest digital camera that i have seen used was 8megapixel, and they were taking them on that resolution and putting them on my lan! EEK

[DMcCoy]

Photoshop is a pain too. I had a wonderful picture today, people shouldn't be surprised if there quota fills up if they decided their canvas needs to be 5000x5000 pixels. I pointed out that I would need 6(!) dell 30" tfts arranged 2 across and 3 down just to view it a 1:1

 

More bad news, this was mentioned today at work too. Noooooo!

[john]

Yup, had the talk about that one, nice camera, but wish people would understand when high resolution is needed. The last time I used the 5M on my camera was when I needed to ensure some A3 glossy prints I was ordering were going to be of the highest quality possible for a display at work, so it was very justified, but normally my camera is set to 3M at the most.

 

Another program to avoid (appart form photoshop) is Corel Painter, its a great tool for Artists, but makes HUUUUUUUUUUUUGE files in your profile, it must have taken a lesson from Google Earth, makes profiles easily over 200MB in size in one opening.