Network administrator Tony Abruzzese uses Astrum Software's StorCast to keep track of how much of that space allotment each student uses. As students get close to their limits on the Windows NT servers, StorCast automatically alerts Abruzzese and the student. StorCast keeps students on their toes. It makes them aware of what they are putting on the server. Abruzzese has found that about two-thirds of the students typically comply with the policy.
Most students are good about removing documents.
They know that if the server gets overloaded, it will crash. Houghton Mifflin, an independent textbook publisher in Boston, recently implemented a storage policy as part of a companywide push to cut costs. Chief Technology Officer Mark Mooney says storage requirements were doubling every year to the point at which 10 percent of the entire IT budget was dedicated to storage. Meanwhile, several Lotus Notes servers had reached 95 percent capacity and were in danger of crashing. Employees complained of slow e-mail, and Notes database searches had slowed to a crawl.