Email Storage
In the last ten months the size of our email (campus wide) has doubled from 550 Gigabytes to 1.1 terabytes (that’s one million megabytes of data) spread over 700 million files.  At the present rate of growth we can no longer survive unrestricted expansion of the email system. The problem is not so much providing extra disk space for this expansion but being able to backup and retrieve the email system in the event of failure.

While the vast majority of email users consume a negligible amount of disk space a small number of users consume the lion's share. Out of 30,000 email users 200 users consume 25% of all disk space; of these 199 are staff. The problem has been exacerbated by some folks sending large email attachments to themselves - effectively using the email system as a free file store. There is no doubt that email attachments use a disproportionate amount of space, and if users were to delete old attachments we would have a manageable email service.

To contain the email service within manageable proportions it is necessary to restrict the amount of space that each individual can use - an email quota system.

Soft Quota
Each user will have a soft quota of xx Mb of disk space, which once exceeded will produce warning messages and set a grace period of 10 days during which there is no restriction on email either sent or received. Users are expected to clean up old emails, delete large attachments or save and remove them.

Once the grace period expires users still be able to send email but no longer able to receive email. Copies of their sent email will no longer be stored in their SENT folder.

Hard Quota
Each user will also have a hard quota of yy Mb of disk space, which once reached will cause all incoming email to bounce with a quota-full message to the sender. No email can be received until sufficient email and attachments are deleted to bring their email within the soft quota limit again.

As a number of users will be immediately over the hard quota as soon as the system is activated an extended grace period of 60 days will be set initially to allow time for users to manage excess email space.

Viewing Current Usage
You can view your current usage of email disk space by going to the web page

https://mail.flinders.edu.au/email

and logging in with your FAN and password. This will display your current usage and the amount remaining in your quota.


Mike Wiseman
ISD

I think this is a bad move. 32 mb is really a tiny amount, I know I would go through that really quick. I note that they are not going to allow people to request a higher limit, but what if you study media studies or something that will require high bandwidth usage.