Quotas - Pupil / Staff... Do You Use Them?

[RichCowell]

Our backup amount has just topped 870GB (950 pupils, 50 staff), and is proving to be a bit of a pain, so I'm looking at introducing Quotas for Staff & Students.

 

Just wondering what other schools use as limits as a guide before I speak to the powers-that-be here...

[tmcd35]

I found quotas more trouble than there worth. They were set when I started here, all gone now. My solution - buy a 5Tb storage array

[gl3nnym]

We use the following:

 

250MB for all pupils

Unlimited for all staff

 

When we have a space issue we just ask offending staff to save their personal stuff elsewhere as we cannot afford expansion at the moment but we can just about let them have unrestricted space.

[gl3nnym]

My solution - buy a 5Tb storage array

 

Your budget is obviously too large :-p

[contink]

I must admit I'm quickly approaching the point of wanting to do something a little cleverer than just setting quotas... Some staff are always using way above their quota but around 50% of those are actually doing so for legitimate teaching reasons and invariably have embraced what IT can do for their teaching.

 

Having already written the script to reduce image sizes down, I'm thinking of taking things further and looking at setting up an "archive" folder which is created automatically and linked back to the main home folder... then have a script that identifies files of specific extension (WMA, MP3, WAV, etc...) and moves them to this archive while leaving a shortcut from the original location... Anything older than the current academic year is similarly moved to the archive.

 

In terms of backups these files would not be part of the regular backup rota although weekend backups to another machine or NAS would be prudent.

 

 

That coupled with a policy of running the bad file scanner and passing any infractions on to the head should reduce things to a manageable level...

[3s-gtech]

We use them for students, and have very few issues, even with a 250MB limit. Staff don't have them, and some home areas are now getting silly with personal photos etc totally GBs. I seem to be able to manage it though, and we haven't needed to move from our 250GB storage for students and 120GB for staff for several years now.

[maniac]

We use quotas on our students, just to prevent them using up all our space with MP3's, images or videos, so they are quite libral.

 

250mb year 7

500m year 8

1GB year 9

1.5GB year 10

3 GB year 11 + 6th form

 

Students get a warning e-mail at 75% use, 90% use and 95% use, they cannot go over their quota.

 

Staff have a 10gb soft quota, the system will e-mail them every week when they are over it, and attach automatically a report showing big files, duplicate files and files that haven't been accessed for over a year - this should help them clean up their space, however most choose to ignore it.

 

Works for us, and pretty much looks after itself.

 

Mike.

[sippo]

We set email warnings that if students do not delete anything when they exceed their 100mb limit they will not be able to save anything. Its the same for staff at 4gb. This is only a warning. Its not strict, but gives me the opportunity to go into their area and delete any unneccessary work.

[pete]

I use them, but they're soft quotas and for me to gauge storage use and spot unusual trends (i.e every kid in Y10 Geography copying a 500MB film from a shared area to their homedir rather than watching it from the shared area).

[AIT]

By a 5 TB Storage array

 

This is all fine. However how do you backup a 5TB storage array..

 

We have san storage but the backup san system is well over 7x the size. running quotas 500mb per staff member. 250 per pupil. unlimited video storage on dedicated storage drive (not backed up) 100GB staff and pupil shared storage areas.

[CyberNerd]

We set KS3+4 students with a 700MB soft quota and a 900MB hard limit, KS5 have 1GB soft and 1.2GB hard. When the soft quota is reached, students are sent an automated email to tell them to clear out, They cannot exceed the hard quota. When they hit the soft quota, they have one weeks grace period to give them time for a clear out. We set maximum file size quotas at 80MB.

[featured_spectre]

Pupils have a 1GB Cap. Staff have a 5GB cap, however most save stuff to the laptop, and their own personal external HDDs, which i dont mind. Our AV catches most stuff they bring in also, and I give them warnings when it gets flagged up.

 

Any member of staff or students that go to within 95% of the cap, it sends me an email and I get them to go through and see what needs deleting (usually work from previous years of no consequence now), works great for me!

[tmcd35]

This is all fine. However how do you backup a 5TB storage array..

 

 

That array is used for other things as well The user data comes to nowhere near that (thank god). I've a 4Tb back up array on which I take 1 full back up a year and then dailey term-time only incrementals through out the year.

[aerospacemango]

We have just put a 2Gb cap on the staff.....the students hardly use anything anyway!!!

 

We came in this morning to find out staff server (800+Gb) had less that 50Mb space left! Immediately put a cap on everything while we tried to trace what had happened.....

 

Found it was a "Back-up-to-Disk" file, that had duplicated.....Filling the disk. All cleared out, but quotas left in place.....for those that moan, I point out that there are 400 staff, and 800Gb, therefore 2Gb each.

[3s-gtech]

Windows FSRM email alerts are really good, at leat when users don't ignore them. Only y10 and up have email here, but as they tend to be the ones who max out their space it's okay. I initially thought it only worked with Exchange, but it just emails out to whatever is specified in the email field in AD.

[daveyboy]

I hate quota's so we dont use them. Just a big stick, and from time to time to time the top 5 users in each year group get to sweep the yards, clear the tables in the dinning hall and clean the corridors. The top five staff get to buy me a bottle of something..........and delete any offending pictures / music, etc, etc

[RichCowell]

We use quotas on our students, just to prevent them using up all our space with MP3's, images or videos, so they are quite libral.

 

250mb year 7

500m year 8

1GB year 9

1.5GB year 10

3 GB year 11 + 6th form

 

Students get a warning e-mail at 75% use, 90% use and 95% use, they cannot go over their quota.

 

Staff have a 10gb soft quota, the system will e-mail them every week when they are over it, and attach automatically a report showing big files, duplicate files and files that haven't been accessed for over a year - this should help them clean up their space, however most choose to ignore it.

 

Works for us, and pretty much looks after itself.

 

Mike.

 

I've not set quotas since Server 2003, and not really looked into them on Server 2008 yet, is that reporting feature listing large/duplicate files etc. a built-in option or do you have a different solution in place?

[Flakes]

2GB for teachers, 10GB for Heads of department(they are expected to use more, anything that is meant for that department should be on the HOD space allowance)

1GB for Students, 5GB for students doing Media.

 

They cant go over there limits and if they need more space they need to request it. all staff have redirected "My Documents" and told not to store Itunes or personal pictures in there my Documents.

[RichCowell]

I'll be setting:

 

Years 7-8 = 250MB

Year 9 = 350MB

Years 10-11 = 500MB

 

I'll leave the staff unrestricted for now - though I've had a word with the biggest offenders 15GB was the largest...