The University of Alaska will begin enforcing Google Workspace storage quotas on Oct. 1 as part of a systemwide effort to manage storage costs. Existing UAF faculty and staff personal accounts will not have quotas applied. Nanook Technology Services will fund UAF's storage overages for the coming year, as it did last year, so that established research and academic workflows are not disrupted by retroactive limits. Faculty and staff do not need to take any action or request an exception. Accounts created for new faculty and staff on or after Oct. 1 will be provisioned at the systemwide 20 GB employee quota.
Student accounts at UAF follow the same systemwide storage policy that applies to students across the University of Alaska. Students whose academic or research work requires storage beyond the standard allocation, including graduate students with established datasets, should request an exception through the process described in OIT's Google Storage Project materials or by contacting the NooksTech Service Desk.
All other account types follow OIT's published quotas and governance, including emeritus and alumni accounts, affiliate and sponsored accounts, departmental and functional accounts, shared drives, and service and resource accounts. Where a unit has a legitimate need beyond the standard allocation, the account owner or sponsoring department should submit a storage exemption request through OIT.
Separately, the systemwide cleanup of long-inactive accounts continues. Accounts inactive for two or more years were disabled on Sept. 1, and permanent deletion of those accounts begins Sept. 15. If you rely on a file that was shared with you by a colleague who has left the university, save a copy to your own Google Drive or move it to your team's shared drive before that date.
UAF will review this position annually. Over the coming year, Nanook Technology Services will evaluate what upper storage limit is appropriate for UAF and may adopt one in the future; any change would be communicated well in advance.
Questions about storage and requests for exceptions can go to the NooksTech Service Desk. Answers to frequently asked questions are available on OIT's Google Storage Project page.
