Starting in 2024, the Office of Information Technology (OIT) will be applying quotas to storage in the University's Google Workspace and other cloud accounts like Brown’s Microsoft 365 service. Although storage has been unlimited, changes to Google and other vendors' cloud offerings now have a financial cost to the University, and quotas have the effect of helping faculty, students, and staff use the storage judiciously. Even as quotas are applied, Google remains the core method of communication and collaboration for Brown, and OIT expects that it will be for the foreseeable future.
Faculty, Staff, and Student Google Account Quotas
The default quota for faculty, staff, and students is 100GB of storage, combined across Google Email and Drive. OIT has set second- and third-level quotas at 500GB or 1000GB (1TB), if initial quotas are exceeded. The presence of a quota helps ensure that compromised accounts do not use storage in an unauthorized way, and serves as a reminder that storage has an expense to the University.
The quotas are designed so that more than 90 percent of the Brown community will never reach quota and need more storage. However, if you approach quota, OIT asks that you attempt to clean up your data and use it more efficiently by removing files that are no longer needed, especially large ones. OIT has an article on how to quickly clean up data by focusing on file size. If you cannot do so, and a quota increase is required for business or academic reasons, please contact the OIT Help Desk, and they will increase your quota for you to the next level.
Google Shared Drive Quotas
A 5GB quota has also been set for new Google Shared Drives. Any member of the community can create a Shared Drive, and use it for storage of Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides. If you need larger, long-term storage in a Drive, please reach out to the OIT Help Desk, and they will set an appropriate quota for your drive as needed. Setting a quota manually allows OIT to better track owners of Shared Drives, and provide continuity-of-service when the initial Drive Owners leave the University.
Alumni Google Account Quotas
Upon graduation, students will be reset to the default 15GB storage limit for Brown Alumni Google accounts. Graduates will be provided with instructions and deadlines for data transfers. OIT recommends that research data created by students be transferred to faculty, or moved to Google Shared Drives so it does not affect alumni personal quotas.
This article has general information about transferring data out of Brown accounts, and can be used at any time to help you reduce storage in your Brown Google Workspace account.