Most of our data storage (user, departmental and course files on the network, email) is centrally located on our HP EVA 6000 disk array. We have about 4 terabytes of physical disk space, which amounts to a bit less than that in actual storage. There is some overhead on the disks to insure that a disk failure cannot cause data loss.
At this time, we have about 350 gigabytes of actual storage for the Causeway Netware cluster "Users" volume, which provides the U: and F: drives. We have about 400 gigabytes total for the "Depts" volume that handles O: and G:, and about 200 gigabytes set aside for the "Courses" volume (P: and K
. The Users volume is about 80% full, Depts is about 75% used and the Courses volume is currently about 80% full. There are also volumes to support networked printing and campuswide applications. We are currently using about half of the 200 gigabytes allocated for the email server.
We have some additional space available on the SAN disk array, but any substantial growth would require an investment in additional hardware (drive shelves and disk drives). However, once we add that hardware we can carve up additional space for any number of things and add it to the SAN-attached servers as needed.
Some of the non-SAN attached systems face a direct limit - we generally buy thin, rack-mounted servers to conserve space, and adding disk to them directly isn't viable. As we move forward, iSCSI may become a viable alternative for such servers. For more information about types of networked storage, please read Introduction to Networked Storage.