Google Shared Drives Quotas

[timbo343]

Did i once again miss the memo on this? Is this a new thing that they have brought in on Google Shared Drives?

 

Our shared drives seemed to be at 100Gb however staff were able to still save to them? In Apps > Google Workspace > Drive and Docs > Manage Shared Drives we could see which drives were exceeding the 100Gb limit and staff of the drives were getting warnings but could still save to the drive.

 

We've upped the limit in Admin > Storage > Manage to 300Gb?

 

I mean, what's the point of a Shared Drive storage limit if the limits aren't actually going to apply?

[jthompson]

It's a fairly new change, but I would have expected any Shared Drives >= 100GB (or whatever the configured limit is for the drive) to be preventing further uploads. Maybe they've added some tolerance in the form of warnings prior to prohibiting further writes.

 

This is the email we had from Google on 7th January.

 

Starting on January 23, 2023, we will begin rolling out updates to the default settings for shared drive storage limits and shared drive creation for all Google Workspace for Education customers. With the pooled storage policy continuing to roll out, these defaults make it easier to manage the way users in your institution can utilize storage and reduce the likelihood of unexpected storage growth via shared drives.

 

The current default shared drive experience allows anyone in the organization to create unlimited shared drives with no limits to the amount of content that can be stored within them. Starting in January, 2023, we will begin rolling out the following changes:

 

If there is no existing limit already set by an admin at the top-level Organizational Unit (OU), a limit of 100GB per shared drive will be applied at the top-level OU.

Shared drive creation will be disabled at the top-level OU if the setting has not been previously updated by an admin at the top-level OU.

What does this mean for my organization?

Shared drive limits:

 

If you or another admin within your domain has applied a shared drive storage limit at the top-level Organizational Unit (OU): You will not see any change to shared drive storage limits.

If you or another admin within your domain has not applied a shared drive storage limit at the top-level OU: All shared drives will have the 100 GB limit applied. Once the limit is applied, shared drives in the top-level OU that are over 100 GB will go into a read-only state and users will not be able to upload additional items to those shared drives.

Shared drive creation:

 

If you or another admin within your domain has modified the ability to create shared drives at the top-level OU: You will not see any change to the ability for users to create shared drives.

If you or another admin within your domain has not modified the ability to create shared drives at the top-level OU, the default shared drive creation policy will be turned off for all users and those that could previously create shared drives will no longer be able to. Sub-OUs that override the default setting and therefore do not inherit the top-level organizational unit shared drive creation policy will continue to work as the sub-OU policy has been configured. Please note that shared drive creation policy can also be scoped to groups.

What do I need to do?

No action is required. However, we do recommend reviewing the “Set storage limits” section of the Admin help center to learn more about setting storage limits for shared drives. You can also review active shared drive utilization within your admin console by navigating to Storage > View all shared drives. Admins will also be able to alter these settings at any time before or after the new defaults are introduced.

 

Shared drive limits:

 

If you do not want the default shared drive storage limit of 100GB applied to your entire domain, apply a different shared drive storage limit at the top-level organizational unit. Alternatively, you can assign shared drives into different OUs and apply different storage limits to those OUs to override the default setting.

 

Shared drive creation:

 

If you do not want the default shared drive creation setting applied to your entire domain, go to Apps > Google Workspace > Drive and Docs > Sharing settings, click “Shared drive creation” and modify the shared drive creation setting for your top-level organizational unit as follows:

 

Check “Prevent users in [Your institution name] from creating new shared drives” and save.

Then uncheck “Prevent users in [Your institution name] from creating new shared drives” and save. This will override the existing default which will be respected when the new default rolls out.

Alternatively, you can override the default for only the specific OUs and groups which need the ability to create shared drives. As a reminder of best practices and to better manage storage for your organization, we strongly recommend only enabling shared drive creation for a subset of users, like teachers and not students.

[Michael]

In late December/January I set all Shared Drives to a quota of 2TB and My Drive's to 300GB (for Staff) and 10GB (for Pupils). You have a pooled data quota of 100TB overall.

 

Google said in their documentation that all Shared Drives without a quota would be set to 100GB and made read only say it was 105GB for example.

[timbo343]

Ah thanks, i seem to be missing out on these updates.

 

Interesting though, some of the Shared Drives were +200Gb with a limit of 100Gb.

[Jaan]

I missed this also.... and now i can't find where to manage the shared drives in the admin panel...... it seems to have moved (again)

 

Can we increase the 200GB shared drive limit?

 

EDIT: found it! under "workspace storage" on the main admin page

Edited February 1, 2023 by Jaan

[jthompson]

It can per per-OU as well, so that you can have have some drives configured with higher limits than others.

[ThatBoringBloke]

We are trying to stick wth the 100Gb for now.

I didn't migrate everything off our local file servers into department team drives for them to just get clogged up with crap once again!

[jthompson]

If you're not getting those update notification emails from Google, it may be worth checking your communication preferences at https://admin.google.com/ac/accountsettings/preferences. Those options may cover it.

[howartp]

@timbo343 We found this yesterday, and as you say some of our drives were larger than the limit yet still working.

 

We turned it off for now.

 

Google Admin > Storage > Storage Settings box > Manage > Shared drive storage limit > Turn on/off