Episode 27: Managing Google Workspace for Education Storage Limits
Since the start of the pandemic, K-12 school districts have been one of the leaders in adopting cloud applications and storage. Applications like Google Workspace for Education and Microsoft 365 allow schools to continue learning remotely.
In 2022, Google is now making updates to its storage policies for its education users. This means district IT teams will have to add managing Google Workspace storage to what already seems to be a neverending list of tasks to complete.
The new policy didn’t come out of nowhere. Google provided a fair warning and we discussed in a previous episode what IT admins need to be mindful of when it comes to managing cloud storage in schools. However, now that the new policy from Google is rolling out—going into effect on July 1st—we believe this is a great time to revisit the topic and dig deeper into it.
In this episode of The K-12 Tech Experience podcast, I’m joined by my ManagedMethods colleague, Charles Mogen, to discuss how schools can be better at managing Google Workspace for Education storage limits. Charles and I dive further into Google’s new storage policy, talk about the impact it can have on school districts, what K-12 IT admins can do to better manage all the files in their Drives/Shared Drives to stay under the limit as time goes on, and how the ManagedMethods platform can help make this process easier and save IT admins valuable time.
Keep scrolling to give the episode a listen and learn more about how to manage Google Workspace for Education storage at your school district. Stay up to date on the latest from The K-12 Tech Experience by subscribing to receive the latest episode as it’s released!
JK: To jump right in and start things off, Charles, can you share more about what the policy changes are from Google in regards to Workspace for Education?
CM: This is a pretty big change for Google here. This is affecting everybody, it’s not just education. What they are doing is they’ve decided to do away with the unlimited storage. For a lot of businesses and schools, this was a huge benefit to using Google.
The change is going into effect in July 2022. Google is moving away from this unlimited storage model and it’s now a “pooled” storage model. The limit to start is 100TB. That’s a pretty big number, but the larger the institution and the larger your school is, the more information you probably have out there.
There are some caveats to what Google is going to count toward that limit. It’s a hot topic and it will be interesting to see how it all plays out. I know a lot of people were surprised and are interested to see how it will all play out. There are a lot of schools out there with a lot of data.
JK: You alluded to the nuances of the storage limits, depending on the Google Workspace for Education licenses school districts have. What are some of those nuances?
CM: Before, it was a pretty simple breakdown. You either had G Suite for Education or you had G Suite for Education Enterprise Edition. Now there are different tiers. Some of the tiers will unlock different levels of storage for your district.
If you are on the Google Workspace for Education Fundamentals version—the standard version—you’re not paying for any licenses. This is the free version of Google Workspace for Education and it comes with 100TB of pooled storage. The Google Workspace for Education Standard version is also at 100TB, nothing is changed there.
Where you start getting additional terabytes is if you upgrade to the Google Workspace for Education Plus version, you get 20GB of additional storage per Plus license your district has. There is also now a Teaching and Learning component of Google Workspace for Education, which gives you 100GB per license at your district.
Google doesn’t think that school districts will hit their storage limit, but it’s important for school districts to be more forward-thinking about this. Now there is a limit, so you need to think about ways to not exceed them in the future.
One last thing is that for school districts with more than 20,000 students, you have the ability to talk with Google directly to try and get more storage for your district.
Listen to the rest of the conversation with Charles below and check out previous episodes on the ManagedMethods podcast page. Make sure to subscribe to The K-12 Tech Experience wherever you listen to your podcasts, so you never miss an episode!
