How big are your users home areas?

[abillybob]

Hey Guys

 

Just wanted to find out the average size of your home areas for your staff users. I currently don't put a limit on how much the staff can save but after doing a data audit on how much people are storing, I've come across some pretty high numbers and wanted to know if it was normal. To list a few

 

73GB - Staff Member Z

53GB - Staff Member X

40GB - Staff Member C

39GB - Staff Member V

38GB - Staff Member B

27GB - Staff Member N

23GB - Staff Member M

19GB - Staff Member A

17GB - Staff Member S

 

Pretty much all our staff are above 5GB in storage, I have had a look round them and a lot of it seems to be duplicated of files, a lot of downloads that have never been cleared and personal things like Music. Other things includes large video files of students or pictures.

 

What do you do to try and keep the limit down?

 

Thanks

[Mako]

250mb

 

Rules of the network;

Thou shalt know how to compress pictures.

Thou shalt not store personal media anywhere.

Thou shalt use one of the three appropriate mapped storage areas (Curriculum, Media, Archive) for your files.

Your home drive is for work-in-progress only, see above rule for when it's completed.

Copying a DVD and dumping it in any area is bad, m'kay.

No, we will not increase your storage because you failed one of the above.

[Joanne]

My biggest is 63GB, next biggest is 30GB.

 

I'll be asking the biggest one to look through their documents because there are a lot of duplications there. I want Server 2012 so it will do that de-duplication thing!!

 

To be fair though... 63GB isn't much is it? I'm encouraging more use of OneDrive too so if they want to keep it all they can.

 

I always archive off old staff user areas onto a USB drive to free up server space. I also insist on clear outs of photos and videos each year - putting them onto a USB drive at least and then if they are needed they can be accessed.

 

My data drive is 850GB and I have 160GB free. We have about 50 members of staff here.

[X-13]

I've come across some pretty high numbers and wanted to know if it was normal. To list a few

 

73GB - Staff Member Z

53GB - Staff Member X

40GB - Staff Member C

39GB - Staff Member V

38GB - Staff Member B

27GB - Staff Member N

23GB - Staff Member M

19GB - Staff Member A

17GB - Staff Member S

 

Pretty much all our staff are above 5GB in storage, I have had a look round them and a lot of it seems to be duplicated of files, a lot of downloads that have never been cleared and personal things like Music. Other things includes large video files of students or pictures.

 

Normal? Sadly, yes.

How it should be? Hell no.

 

I tell people to move things that EVERYONE [or their year group/subject] can use to the staff drive. Otherwise, we end up with 40 versions of literally the same file.

 

I also show people how to compress/resize files, but the lack of Windows Live Photo Gallery makes it a bit more complex now. I've been looking at gimp's batch mode recently.

 

What do you do to try and keep the limit down?

 

Threaten to start deleting stuff that shouldn't be there [.mp3, .exe...] and introduce them to the re-education stick.

 

There's not much I CAN do other than have words with SLT... and we all know how that usually goes.

 

 

250mb

 

Rules of the network;

Thou shalt know how to compress pictures.

Thou shalt not store personal media anywhere.

Thou shalt use one of the three appropriate mapped storage areas (Curriculum, Media, Archive) for your files.

Your home drive is for work-in-progress only, see above rule for when it's completed.

Copying a DVD and dumping it in any area is bad, m'kay.

No, we will not increase your storage because you failed one of the above.

 

Can I come work where you are, please?

Edited June 10, 2015 by X-13

[clockend25]

No restrictions on ours. Having checked we have 7 users with more than 10GB in their areas. If anyone takes massive liberties then they're told to sort it. It's usually someone banging their entire iTunes library on to N:\

 

Deduplication means it should be a while before even the most dedicated hoarders threaten to fill our storage.

[Mako]

I think I would personally burn the computer of any member of staff who had accumulated 70GB single-handed. Our curriculum drive has a data limit for each subject. I think the combined total of curriculum and media files for our largest subject doesn't exceed 40GB, and that's a department with 10 or so staff.

 

Large areas are not the norm here because we've been very rigid with our limitations, with the backing of the Headteacher. We don't want duplicated junk on the network so we don't have it. If you're having issues with space and file management, get a big stick, draw a line in the sand with it and start hitting appropriate staff with it.

 

I can't imagine the chaos if I let them have unrestricted space. I don't envy your backups or the maze of trying to go through and clear that up. We have upped the storage capacity of a couple of departments in their Curriculum drive, but only after they put forward a good reason and I'd gone through and checked their storage.

[Joanne]

Yeah the only reason I'm not that bothered is because backups are going through fine and only taking a few hours.

[Mako]

Can I come work where you are, please?

 

Yes you can. Conditional to acceptance of Planet Rock filling the airwaves.

[X-13]

Yes you can. Conditional to acceptance of Planet Rock filling the airwaves.

 

That's fine.

 

What's the pay?

[Mako]

That's fine.

 

What's the pay?

 

Going rate in rural Yorkshire is £3.42/hour, 2 lambs and a bag of grain. Negotiable.

[X-13]

Going rate in rural Yorkshire is £3.42/hour, 2 lambs and a bag of grain. Negotiable.

 

£15 an hour, you can keep the lambs [i won't judge ] and I get to use the science lab to turn the grain into beer.

[Quackers]

Our staff don't really use the home drives as they only get really used for legacy Windows stuff via RDP. Once their Mac hard drive is full, its full, so they have no option but to do house keeping. I give each staff member a 250GB Time Machine Quota on the Mac Server.

[Steve21]

Current top 10 (of 151) for us (Pre-Dedup):

101GB

63GB

62GB

45GB

40GB

38GB

28GB

19GB

19GB

17GB

 

Current top 10 (of 151) for us (After-Dedup):

 

1.1GB

380MB

350MB

294MB

263MB

232MB

145MB

143MB

136MB

102MB

 

Love dedup haha

 

Steve

[abillybob]

Cheers guys very useful I think I'll just have a moan about staff keeping their files in good condition or I'll do it for you kind of attitude that should get them moving!

[pcstru]

Cheers guys very useful I think I'll just have a moan about staff keeping their files in good condition or I'll do it for you kind of attitude that should get them moving!

A better approach than the latter might be to find out what their requirements are (why are they storing so much) and then discuss how the technology can be made to meet those requirement given whatever budget you have (or are asking for having determined the requirements). Just telling the users that they are using too much space can be seen as the tail wagging the dog (you are there to make technology work for them, they are not there to make their work fit into the technology you choose to give them).

[localzuk]

A better approach than the latter might be to find out what their requirements are (why are they storing so much) and then discuss how the technology can be made to meet those requirement given whatever budget you have (or are asking for having determined the requirements). Just telling the users that they are using too much space can be seen as the tail wagging the dog (you are there to make technology work for them, they are not there to make their work fit into the technology you choose to give them).

 

This is exactly right. Storage is (relatively) cheap now, so limiting for limiting's sake seems counter-productive. We've never come anywhere near filling any of our storage servers. There's always been a good 20% margin at the point of replacement, and our storage solution wasn't that expensive for us.

[mjk]

We don't care. Google are paying.

[aleach2]

250mb

 

Rules of the network;

Thou shalt know how to compress pictures.

Thou shalt not store personal media anywhere.

Thou shalt use one of the three appropriate mapped storage areas (Curriculum, Media, Archive) for your files.

Your home drive is for work-in-progress only, see above rule for when it's completed.

Copying a DVD and dumping it in any area is bad, m'kay.

No, we will not increase your storage because you failed one of the above.

 

For staff we have a sliding scale from 1GB - 5GB

 

E.g. Level 1 = 1GB & Level 5 = 5GB

 

Students are similar but start with 250MB and go upto 350MB. Photography & graphics students have 1GB-5GB quotas.

 

We also lock down departmental shares too. 5GB - 10GB.

 

It just allows use to control data growth.

[Pete10141748]

I've got around 100 staff, most of them at 40Gb or less, a few at close to 100Gb after 7+ years of working here and accumulating stuff.

 

My server is shortly to run out of space, so I've grabbed a couple of 10Tb NAS boxes that I am going to archive everything onto as soon as I get them. Each person will then be told that from now on their Home drive is for the current year's work only, and the everything else will be found in their new Archive area; if they want something from their Archive to be available at home they can put a copy back into their Home drive, but if they reach their storage limit then it'll be up to them to trim it down, not more expansions for anyone (there just isn't the disk space).

 

When it comes to non-work related files I'd say some good advice would be to check, update & enforce your AUP with management's help. There should be NO personal data on a school computer (that's made very clear to everyone here). I don't care if you don't have a laptop at home and just bought the newest iPhone and need to sync it, the laptop is NOT your own personal device, it's the property of the school as is the server disk space, and the backup disk space, and I'm not letting you take away Gb's of space from other staff&students for your (frankly, awful) music collection.

 

Putting quota's on disk space is a good idea as well. Here they are set at 40Gb (going to reduce to 20Gb once the NAS is in place), if they go over their laptop forces them to come and see me. To date all I've done is up them another 10Gb's or so each time, but from this point on I'm going to have to be stricter and get them to sort out what isn't needed anymore!

[timbo343]

Going rate in rural Yorkshire is £3.42/hour, 2 lambs and a bag of grain. Negotiable.

 

Im North Yorks too and you get lambs and grain!! Lucky sod!! LOL

[Mako]

Im North Yorks too and you get lambs and grain!! Lucky sod!! LOL

 

I see you mark yourself as being in the Leeds area. Car stereos packets of Wrigley's in place of grain? One man's trash, and all that... all I'll say is that lambs make for good lawn mowers.

Edited June 10, 2015 by Mako

[Joanne]

I thought people from Yorkshire got paid in pies and tea?

[Mako]

I thought people from Yorkshire got paid in pies and tea?

 

We call that "leisure time". Not sure what you mean.

[DCUK6]

Set 5gb for students and 20 for staff.

 

Its only really there to make them think about what they are storing. Students are all on less than 1gb except one and only had to increase two or three staff drives. Will increase whenever needed though.

 

Moving up to raided 4tb drives soon instead of 1tb but going to leave the limits the same.

Edited June 10, 2015 by DCUK6

[timbo343]

I see you mark yourself as being in the Leeds area. Car stereos packets of Wrigley's in place of grain? One man's trash, and all that... all I'll say is that lambs make for good lawn mowers.

 

Lol, something like that, not wrigleys though, thats too posh . Just outside of leeds, but not classed as leeds, still classed as NY.