Solving Higher Education’s Next Big Challenge: Storage

Cloud technology has expanded higher education’s ability to reach under-served demographics through virtual classes, collaboratively conduct research from anywhere in the world, and provide unfettered access to online applications. However, as more staff, faculty, and students work in a digital environment, they are challenged with not having enough space to store the data and information consistently being created within their organization’s infrastructure.

Traditionally, institutions with Google Workspace for Education were equipped with unlimited storage, but in 2020 Google for Education announced changes to their storage policies which included a restriction to 100 TB of pooled storage with an additional 20 GB-100 BG per license depending on the subscribed edition. With years of data and information already stored in the domain, many institutions will be at capacity once the new policies go into effect. While they won’t lose those existing files, they won’t have space in Google Drive for future growth and development. As a result, it is crucial that technical leaders assess current storage practices, reorganize shared drives, and reduce unused files.

Tips to Successfully Manage Domain Storage:

1. Control Shared Drives: Unless configured to do otherwise, shared drives adopt the same settings as Google Drive, and allow any domain user to create them. Once established, they can share files with internal and external contacts or headlessly dump in files, taking up available storage. Institutions should regulate who can create shared drives and who can add users to them.

2. Implement Storage Policies: Storage policies define data type, retention timelines, access permissions, and more, but many institutions don’t have them in place or need to bolster those that exist to properly organize, retain and archive files.

Utilize our sample storage policies for data retention and acceptable use. Download here.

3. Use Version History: When working in the domain, users can often end up with multiple files for the same project so they can refer to older versions. Users should avoid having different documents for various rounds of edits to their content by using version history instead. This will allow them to keep track of their edits while salvaging storage capacity.

4. Communicate with Users: Domain users can be unaware of how much data and information they are storing, and outdated files often sit taking up space. Technical leaders should communicate to users and educate them on how to organize their files and clean up their drives.

Utilize the sample communication document found in our Higher Education Storage Readiness Guide. Download here. 

If your institution is considering how and where to efficiently store the data and information in your Google Workspace for Education domain, begin by monitoring your storage consumption with CDW Education’s Gopher for Drive. This no-cost solution reveals total storage usage, identifies individual storage usage, and generates high-level reports on space being consumed by shared drive and files. 

Access the application on the Google Workspace Marketplace. Download here.

To learn more about all the ways CDW Education can support your institution’s storage efforts, contact our Higher Education Consultant.