Google Workspace Storage Changes

No.  UCI signed onto a multiyear contract negotiated by the UC system.  These changes are being made to ensure the ongoing viability of Google Workspace.

There is a larger industry trend toward eliminating “unlimited” offerings for cloud-based services. This has its roots in the fact that, unlike 5-10 years ago, storage costs are no longer rapidly decreasing. In fact, they have leveled off or increased in recent years.

UCI Google Workspace is an important part of OIT’s Communication and Collaboration service offerings; any changes within our control will be a part of our ongoing discussions with campus executive leadership about the governance and funding of Google Workspace.

Google will eliminate the free and unlimited storage offering that they have provided to the K-12 and higher education community for nearly a decade along with their rebranding from Google G-Suite for Education to Google Workspace Education.

1. They offer tiers of free and paid service offerings for education customers.
2. None of these new tiers include unlimited storage.
3. As custodian of Google Workspace, OIT has until the end of June 2024 to adjust our service accordingly.
4. As of March 2023, UCI is using 6 PB of storage, growing about 20% year over year. This is 5 PB more than what we are licensed currently. We need to reduce what we use to less than what we have licensed or the entire service stops working.

There are some major changes that we will be putting in place to ensure that the campus Google services remain working. The underlying context is that Google uses a pooled storage model, meaning that we have two levers to manage storage: we can grow the pie by purchasing licenses and we can carve up the pie into slices to prevent overconsumption. Central funding determines the initial size of the pie. Storage limits define the size of the slices.

1. Limits on accounts. Accounts will be placed into predefined storage limits (“tiers”). OIT is developing a cost recovery process for faculty and staff account holders and shared drive owners who need a higher tier of storage. You may also consider low- or no-cost alternatives. See the Alternatives tab above.
2. Limits on shared drives. Existing shared drives will also be placed into predefined storage tiers. The ability to create shared drives will be turned off and centrally managed, available upon request if certain conditions are met, and subject to storage limits.
3. Account management.
   1. Unlicensed accounts (Retirees, Alumni, Emeriti) contribute to the pie as long as they are active within the last 180 days. On day 181, they no longer contribute storage but their use counts against the overall pie. To keep them from putting the service at risk by using more storage than they are contributing, we will delete accounts that are inactive for more than 180 days.
   2. Licensed accounts contribute storage to the pie whether they are active or not. Therefore, licensed accounts will not be deleted for inactivity. All faculty, staff, and registered students are licensed.

All data in Google Workspace count against your storage limit. This includes email, photos, documents, and anything in Drive.

Google treats account storage and shared drive storage separately, so data in your account and data on shared drives will be subject to separate, and possibly different, storage limits.

A storage limit is the maximum amount of storage a single account or shared drive can store.   Because of the way Google imposes storage limits, we are unable to customize limits on a per-account basis, so we have organized the limits into reasonable slices (“tiers”).  The tiers are organized according to Google licenses (or multiples thereof). 

Legacy Tiers

• Faculty, staff, research teams, and administrative units will be placed into a legacy tier (up to 1 TB) based on your Google Workspace usage in March 2023. See “What if I have an existing UCI Google account?” below for more details.
• Undergraduate and graduate students will be placed in the default tier of 20GB. 

Default Tiers

New accounts will default into the following tiers. The new default tiers went into effect on 5/12/2023.

For faculty, researchers, and staff:

With the limited campus funding we are receiving, we will “legacy” your existing account up to 1 TB (“Large”) based on your usage as of March 2023.  Examples:  

• If you are faculty and you use 85 GB of storage today, your account will be placed into the “Medium” (100 GB) tier.   
• If you are a principal investigator using 22 TB of storage in your account, your storage limit will be 1 TB.   

For all other accounts including undergraduate and graduate students:

All other accounts will be assigned to their default storage tier. 

There are several ways to see your current storage usage.

1. To see the breakdown of usage in your account, log in to your UCI Google account and go to https://drive.google.com/settings/storage
2. To see all the files in your Google MyDrive sorted by usage, log in to your UCI Google account and go to https://drive.google.com/drive/quota
3. To check on the storage usage for a shared drive you own, open the shared drive and select the circled “i” next to Manage members on the top-right.
   
4. This will open Details about the Shared Drive including the “Storage used”.
   

Your storage is shared across Google Drive, Photos, and Gmail. When your account reaches its storage limit, you can’t send or receive emails. Use Google’s guide below to learn how to see how much you are using and how to delete large or unneeded files to stay within your storage tier.

• How to manage files in your Google Drive storage

We will legacy in existing, active shared drives with storage limits similar to how we are addressing individual accounts (e.g., a shared drive using 85 GB will be placed in the Medium storage tier, a shared drive using 25 TB of storage will be placed in the 1 TB tier).

We intend to put limits in place in phases. 

• Hard limits for new accounts started 5/12/2023
• For existing accounts, we are establishing “soft limits” first, which will result in notifications but will not prevent you from working in your account. 
• Hard limits for existing accounts will be progressively phased in over the second half of 2023.  Accounts well under their storage tier will receive hard limits first, with limits progressively applied to existing accounts through the remainder of the year.  Accounts over their tier will be the last to receive hard limits.
• See the Timeline tab above for the schedule. 

• OIT developed a cost recovery process for faculty, staff, research teams, and administrative units to purchase their way into a higher tier for accounts, shared drives, or both.
• Undergraduates, graduate students*, retirees, alumni, and guests will not be able to buy into higher tiers.

* Graduate students who are verified as principal or co-principal investigators on a grant will be treated as faculty.

Cost:

The cost of a Google Workspace Storage Upgrade license is $1,440 a year for 10 TB. Cost recovery will be available for the Large (1 TB) or Custom (10 TB+) storage limits. This reflects the actual cost of the underlying Google licenses that OIT will need to purchase on your behalf. You will not be credited the cost of your current tier.

 Purchasing Additional Storage

• How to purchase additional Google Storage
• Google Workspace Storage Tier Purchase Request Form

NOTE: Accounts and shared drives are treated separately by Google Workspace and will have separate tiers. If you want to raise the storage limit for your account and your shared drive(s), those will be separate transactions.

• Review: Please review guidelines for storing P3 or P4 data and record retention requirements (refer to UC’s records retention schedule and/or your grant requirements) before deleting your data.
• Clean up. Delete any files, folders, or emails that you are confident you no longer need from Google.
• Empty your Google Trash: Deleted files in Google are moved to the trash in Google. Just like on your computer, you need to empty the trash for the files to be fully deleted. If you don’t need the files there, please empty them.
• Reconsider Your Options: UCI has several free or low-cost storage alternatives to Google Workspace that are under UC contract and protect both institutional information and your privacy to a far greater extent than using a personal cloud solution. (See Alternatives tab above.)

Your account will no longer work until you delete enough data to get under your limit. You will no longer be able to add new Google Drive files or edit any of your existing Google Docs.

If an account or shared drive continues over its limit for an extended period of time, we reserve the right to delete it to keep the Google Workspace service running for the rest of campus.

Depending on what you are trying to do, UCI has several alternatives available today (and a couple in development) at no or low cost to you. See the Alternatives tab above for a complete list.

One alternative is using Microsoft OneDrive which is part of Microsoft 365. See the OneDrive Quick Reference Guide for tips on migrating including how to use Google’s Takeout to export your data.

1. Graduate students should move their research under their Principal Investigator’s (PI) account. 
2. If you are the PI or co-PI, open a ticket with the OIT Help Desk. Include your UCInetID, the grant number and the granting agency. We will reach out to help find a solution.