At the beginning of the semester, NC State’s Office of Information Technology (OIT) limited Google Workspace storage for students and faculty from the former unlimited amount due to Google ending free unlimited storage for all academic institutions. Now, OIT is finding ways to accommodate the needs of University Google users while decreasing the use of storage on campus.

Mark Hoit, vice chancellor of information technology, said Google’s decision to end unlimited academic storage was a result of users abusing unlimited storage by uploading copious amounts of data and selling their storage to individuals outside of educational systems, although there is no evidence of this occurring at NC State. 

While to users, the data was unlimited, Google still had to maintain this data, which proved to be more costly than the company could handle.

NC State users are currently using approximately 5.5 petabytes of data. One PB comprises 1,000 terabytes, which is 1 million gigabytes. Only 1.4PB of Google’s cloud storage infrastructure is reserved for the University’s use. Starting in November 2024, the University will be required to pay the difference. 

“When Google starts charging us, our goal is to get down to a little over 2PB, which means we will be paying for one extra [petabyte],” Hoit said. “If our calculations hold true and everybody’s able to move things, we help them move it in places and store it or tell them where the right spots are, it will still cost us $144,000 per year. But we think that might be the sweet spot that doesn’t drive everybody crazy. It gives everybody enough storage.”

To combat this deficit, Sarah Noell, associate director of OIT, said the Office chose to introduce quotas on storage for students and faculty.

“For the last year to 18 months, we have looked at the data in our environment, we’ve looked at the accounts and we came up with suggestions by working with other universities across the United States and how they’re approaching this problem,” Noell said. “We came up with quotas that would work with 80 to 90% of our accounts.”

For students, the designated quota is set at 15GB, the same amount available to regular Google users. Matt Deal, NC State Google systems administrator, said OIT found around 90% of students operate comfortably under 15GB, with the majority using less than 5GB.

For professors, the quota is now set at 100GB. Hoit said professors are encouraged to utilize the University’s research storage to securely store research data and cut down on Google Workspace storage.

Deal said OIT created specialized quotas for those who are close to or have exceeded their quota to clean out their Google Workspace storage.

“We didn’t want to immediately put their accounts into a state where they’re over quota because that would break functionality for every Google service except for mail,” Hoit said. “We created several storage groups. … We put you in the one where you had at least 30% headroom.”

Kim Vassiliadis, assistant vice chancellor for outreach, communications and counseling, said OIT will be working with these users to help them reduce their storage usage.

“The quotas that were put in place and these extra exemptions were really just a first step to get quotas across campus, and now this is where the real work starts,” Vassiliadis said.

Deal said this effort is largely dependent on students’ cooperation. In just the first four days of limited storage, Deal said 10TB were manually cleaned from University accounts.

Deal said Google Drive, Google Photos and Gmail contribute to Google Workspace storage quotas. He said he advises users to check the biggest files in their Drive storage, make sure their personal photos are not synced with their accounts and clear out old emails in order to cut down on storage. Deal said personal data can be downloaded and moved to other Google accounts with the Google Takeout tool.

“We saw a lot of likely accidental personal use across campus with [Google Photos], — you’ll have folks with hundreds of gigabytes of photos — and we can only assume that those are them actually just snapping pictures with their phone, and it’s syncing to the wrong account,” Deal said. “You probably don’t want those in this account because they’re eating up your valuable space you could use for academics.” 

Vassiliadis said keeping Google Workspace storage purely academic prepares students for graduating and no longer having access to their NC State account.

“You’re kind of helping your future self when you graduate [by] moving all of your personal stuff out of your NC State account, so that you can keep them separate so that you know that that stuff will go with you,” Vassiliadis said. “You want to keep your personal stuff for as long as you can and not have it be stuck here and then suspended when the account is suspended.”

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