ITS restricts oversized e-mail and personal drive storage
Joy Pavelski
Issue date: 4/3/08 Section: News
More campus network users have received e-mail warnings after Information Technology Services limited e-mail and personal drive space over spring break.
Users receive a warning e-mail when their personal drive space reaches 500MB, and cannot add material beyond 750MB. E-mail inboxes reach the warning stage at 90MB, and will not send mail when their size reaches 110MB.
David Zenz, executive director of ITS, said last week that 52 of Hillsdale College's 1,799 personal drive directories are currently over the 750MB "hard limit."
"We need to conserve space because hard drive space is a finite resource," he said. "We are at the end of the life of our current [storage area network] architecture, and are talking to vendors to give us our next design."
Students at Adrian College, a nearby liberal arts school with 1,250 students, have 1GB of combined e-mail inbox and personal drive space, said Director of Information Services Steve Stempien on Monday.
Hope College, in Holland, Mich., outsourced campus e-mail to Google. Their 3,226 students each have 6.5GB of space, a number that increases every day because of Google's e-mail structure. Students at Hope do not have a personal drive on their campus network. Jeff Pestun, Hope's associate director of information technology, said most students use their campus inboxes to mail and store files online.
The recently placed limits fall in step with other improvements ITS is developing for the college. With moving most campus computers into Microsoft Vista, the most recent Microsoft operating system, came an opportunity using new software to develop a bulletin board-style document library for the college.
An option like this would ameliorate the current campus dependence on mass e-mails by organizing announcements much like an RSS feed. Greg Harms, systems administrator for Hillsdale ITS, called such an arrangement an "intranet."
"All the different constituent groups can have their areas but still be connected to the whole campus," Harms said Tuesday.
"There are a lot of pockets of information on this campus, and they don't have to be on e-mail."
ITS has long discussed how to manage information flow on campus. Harms said the department is currently considering software from Hillsdale's contractor Datatel, Inc., called "Active Campus Portal."
One way ITS has begun testing ideas like this, Harms said, is through their announcement blog [click here]. This site posts the same announcements students receive now, and has the additional benefit of allowing modification after a post so that students do not need to receive several e-mails with corrections after a change.
"It's about helping to identify the audience more appropriately, rather than sending [information] to everyone," Harms said.
For now, though, streamlining the campus communication flow awaits further discussion and tests. Until then, students must manage their accounts to avoid exceeding current limits, Zenz said.
"E-mail and standard documents we all have with relatively high importance to them typically are not that large," Zenz said. "You can have quite a volume and still keep things within reasonable limits."
Zenz also said ITS is willing to be flexible on space limits with individual students who need larger storage for, say, art department projects or large presentations. He pointed to Spring Arbor University, which uses the external photo sharing service Smug Mug to post its pictures online, as well as widely used free services like Facebook and Google Mail as examples of easy alternatives to clogging campus servers.
Users receive a warning e-mail when their personal drive space reaches 500MB, and cannot add material beyond 750MB. E-mail inboxes reach the warning stage at 90MB, and will not send mail when their size reaches 110MB.
David Zenz, executive director of ITS, said last week that 52 of Hillsdale College's 1,799 personal drive directories are currently over the 750MB "hard limit."
"We need to conserve space because hard drive space is a finite resource," he said. "We are at the end of the life of our current [storage area network] architecture, and are talking to vendors to give us our next design."
Students at Adrian College, a nearby liberal arts school with 1,250 students, have 1GB of combined e-mail inbox and personal drive space, said Director of Information Services Steve Stempien on Monday.
Hope College, in Holland, Mich., outsourced campus e-mail to Google. Their 3,226 students each have 6.5GB of space, a number that increases every day because of Google's e-mail structure. Students at Hope do not have a personal drive on their campus network. Jeff Pestun, Hope's associate director of information technology, said most students use their campus inboxes to mail and store files online.
The recently placed limits fall in step with other improvements ITS is developing for the college. With moving most campus computers into Microsoft Vista, the most recent Microsoft operating system, came an opportunity using new software to develop a bulletin board-style document library for the college.
An option like this would ameliorate the current campus dependence on mass e-mails by organizing announcements much like an RSS feed. Greg Harms, systems administrator for Hillsdale ITS, called such an arrangement an "intranet."
"All the different constituent groups can have their areas but still be connected to the whole campus," Harms said Tuesday.
"There are a lot of pockets of information on this campus, and they don't have to be on e-mail."
ITS has long discussed how to manage information flow on campus. Harms said the department is currently considering software from Hillsdale's contractor Datatel, Inc., called "Active Campus Portal."
One way ITS has begun testing ideas like this, Harms said, is through their announcement blog [click here]. This site posts the same announcements students receive now, and has the additional benefit of allowing modification after a post so that students do not need to receive several e-mails with corrections after a change.
"It's about helping to identify the audience more appropriately, rather than sending [information] to everyone," Harms said.
For now, though, streamlining the campus communication flow awaits further discussion and tests. Until then, students must manage their accounts to avoid exceeding current limits, Zenz said.
"E-mail and standard documents we all have with relatively high importance to them typically are not that large," Zenz said. "You can have quite a volume and still keep things within reasonable limits."
Zenz also said ITS is willing to be flexible on space limits with individual students who need larger storage for, say, art department projects or large presentations. He pointed to Spring Arbor University, which uses the external photo sharing service Smug Mug to post its pictures online, as well as widely used free services like Facebook and Google Mail as examples of easy alternatives to clogging campus servers.
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