BITS Blog

Early Spring Cleaning

 I remember clearly the day I bought my first hard drive…A 20 MB hard drive the size of a brick. “I’ll never fill this up!” I thought to myself, and was very relieved at not having to swap floppies every time I wanted to run a program. It seems so long ago, the year was 1990.  

Nowadays, I can fit about 410 times the data that hard drive could hold into a chip smaller than my thumbnail (8GB micro SD), and put in my cell phone or camera. Or I can purchase a portable music player (80 Gigabyte i-Pod) that can hold over 4000 times the capacity of those drives.

Times have changed for sure, and data storage has become a challenge for many organizations worldwide. While storage capacity has certainly become bigger and less expensive over the years, the need for data storage has grown right along with it.

Here at Biodesign, we have gone through a similar increase in data capacity and requirements. From the inception of Biodesign, we have grown from a 4 terabyte (TB) storage system to a fully redundant 37 TB for file storage and 120 TB system for storing security camera video.

The challenge:

Due to reductions in funds, we are unable to expand the storage system. Meantime, data storage demand continues to increase, as well as the amount of media required for backups.
The time window to backup all that data also becomes larger.

The Solution:

Clean – up! There are a number of things we can do to ensure we have enough storage to get us through these tough economic times. Here are a few examples:

·         Move your music library from the network shares to the local drive(s).

·         Review the files you own in the network shares, and remove them if they’re no longer needed.

·         When sharing documents, use a shared resource everyone can access, and send your colleagues a link with the location of the file. This reduces the number of times a copy of the same file gets stored on the file server.

·         E-mail Personal folders. We encourage you to store your personal folders on the server, however; housekeeping rules apply just the same. Keep only what you need, and let go of the old funny video your friend sent you a year ago.

·         Application installation files. There are literally hundreds of installation files on the file server. Not only do these files only get used once (Typically), they are usually fairly large, and there are multiple copies of the same file. Acrobat Reader is a good example.

·         Backups. We find many people make backups of their local hard drive to the file server. While a temporary backup of your files is acceptable (during computer changes, etc) These backups usually stay there permanently. These backups are usually very large because they have the complete contents of the computer’s hard drive. And sometimes there is even more than one.

·         Notification of employee termination. There are many folders that belong to users who have left Biodesign, or even the department, that are still on the file server. These folders not only consume space, they are being backed up, increasing the time it takes for backups to finish, and costly backup media (tapes). Please notify Biodesign Information Technology Services (BITS) whenever an employee is terminated so their files can be removed.

We at Biodesign Information Technology, have taken some steps to encourage not only the clean-up of the network shares on the file server(s), but also to better organize the data that is currently stored there. Many researchers have research data or documentation stored in their personal space (P: drive), this data belongs in an area where other people in your area can have access to it. The shared (S: Drive) and Research (R: Drive) areas are ideal for this purpose.

As part of the effort to reduce the amount of data on our file server(s), we have implemented space quotas. A default quota limit of 50 GB has been put in place on the P: drive. If your data storage exceeds this amount, you will be unable to write any more data to this drive. Please contact BITS if you have questions or concerns regarding your space quota.

In addition to the quota limits, we will be providing key department/center personnel a report on current usage. With their help, we hope to be able to remove files/folders that are no longer needed.

Summary:

With your help, we hope to continue to support your needs and those of the institute. Please help us by performing regularly scheduled housekeeping practices on your drive(s), and by limiting your data to be mainly work related. By becoming storage responsible, we can tread these rough waters and ensure smooth sailing in the upcoming future.

If you require assistance with archiving and cleanup, please contact BITS. We will be glad to assist you.