[fn-mote]

This is it 100%.

> From: (Jan 2023) We currently store 12.4 PB of data across all Google services, and our new storage cap, without significant additional fees, is 1.9 PB.

See the timeline [1]. They have been forcing the rest of the university to reduce their usage. Finally it's time for alumni. There's no need for a fuss on HN about this. There's a lot more belt tightening across the university.

I'm not seeing the legitimate use for 5GB of email. Delete your attachments and it has to be fine. Annoying? Sure, but you can search email for large attachments. How bad could it be. I'm sure they follow a power law, so deleting a few of them should do it for "legitimate" over-quota users.

[1]: https://bconnected.berkeley.edu/projects/google-cost-reducti...

[AnthonyMouse]

The cost of 12,400TB of storage is on the order of $100,000. UC Berkeley has an annual budget of over $3,000,000,000, i.e. this is 0.003% of their annual budget. Also, it's Berkeley, they probably have that kind of hardware sitting around. They should just stop using Google services.

[tredre3]

You're grossly underestimating the cost. With some amount of redundancy and growth that would be 24TB of drive capacity at least. You're looking at $250k in drives alone. You also need almost 100 servers to host that many drives, so another $250k. Then they'd have to pay maybe $500k/yr for three sysadmins (including benefits). Then some amount for tape backups, connectivity, electricity, maintenance.

Perhaps still peanuts for UC Berkeley and worth it, I don't know, but it's not just writing a 100k check.

[AnthonyMouse]

> With some amount of redundancy and growth that would be 24TB of drive capacity at least. You're looking at $250k in drives alone.

16TB drives are available for ~$150:

https://www.amazon.com/Exos-SATA-512E-%E5%86%85%E8%94%B5%E3%...

12,400TB is 775 16TB drives. Add 20% for redundancy and this is 930. At $155 this is <$150,000, not $250,000, and this is the primary expense.

> You also need almost 100 servers to host that many drives

No you don't, you put them in an array container, which will hold 24-48 drives, e.g.:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/226215269668

Those hold 48 drives, so you'd need 20 of them and they're ~$300. It doesn't even move the needle.

> Then they'd have to pay maybe $500k/yr for three sysadmins (including benefits)

Why on earth would you need three sysadmins? After the initial setup this is a part time job for one person, and you probably already have that person because they're the ones dealing with all the problems caused by unreliable cloud vendors and forced SaaS software changes.

> Then some amount for tape backups, connectivity, electricity, maintenance.

Tape is cheap. Universities already have fiber. Maintenance contracts are for bureaucrats, you just use commodity parts and then keep a few spares. Electricity is going to be some tens of thousands of dollars a year. This is all still "on the order of $100,000", i.e. the price has that number of significant figures. Then annual cost is actually less because the drives etc. will last for more than a year.