Since an early December announcement that the university needed to pare its CyBox data storage to 1.2 petabytes (PB) by July 1, individual and department account holders have gone to work. From a vast 1.8 PB in November, Iowa State's collective CyBox storage is down to 1.45 PB -- more than halfway to the goal -- and a series of storage quota deadlines scheduled to start this month is on hold.
Box -- a Cloud data storage service branded internally as CyBox -- last winter announced the end of unlimited storage for its education customers and gave them a year to meet storage quotas or incur additional fees.
Faculty, staff and information technology (IT) professionals around campus stepped up to either delete data or move it to another service, such as Microsoft's OneDrive, Google's Drive or, for research files specifically, university large scale storage.
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"With the help of IT staff campuswide who have facilitated data cleanup, we're well on our way to our CyBox contract quota of 1.2 PB," said Jason Shuck, manager of the systems operations team in information technology services (ITS). "As a result, rather than focusing on individual and departmental quotas, we changed our focus to simply getting under the university quota."
We're not there yet
With another 250 terabytes (TB) -- approximately 40% of the university's necessary storage reduction -- to remove or move and avoid Box overage charges on July 1, Shuck encouraged CyBox users to continue cleaning their storage files. He said IT staff will contact high-volume users such as departments and research teams to discuss options and assist them. He offered these storage tips:
- CyBox is not intended to serve as a backup tool. ITS recommends that employees work with their IT professional or review Google Backup and Sync as an option.
- CyBox is for storage only of ISU data. Personal files, including photographs, videos or documents, shouldn't be stored on university resources. See the university's Acceptable Use of Information Technology Resources policy.
- Files shared by many across a unit should live in a department/unit account, not an individual account. Whenever possible, units are encouraged to keep their data in CyBox.
- Check with your IT professional before moving data to another service to minimize the chance of lost data and address concerns about insufficient bandwidth during a transfer.
Related story
- Storage limits are coming to CyBox, Dec. 3, 2020
