No! We negotiated a 3 year agreement with Box in 2023 and we are working to keep the UW-Madison Box service sustainable without unlimited storage. We expect Box to be part of the campus portfolio of services for the foreseeable future.

The current Box contract ends on 12/31/2024.

The contract automatically renews annually until either party decides to terminate. We have a 3 year agreement that sets licensing costs through 12/31/2026.

The over all storage limit for our enterprise was not defined in our most current license agreement.

9/3/2024: 640TB (terabytes)

UW-Madison Box storage growth rate was approximately 1TB per day prior to implementing storage quotas on 6/15/2020. In the last 6 months our storage has remained static at around 640TB.

No. We are no longer offering unlimited storage as part of the UW-Madison Box service.

The end of unlimited storage was announced in December of 2019 at our 2020 contract renewal meeting with Box. Box has backed off from the original 285TB storage cap but we need to continue to manage our overall storage footprint.

50GB (gigabytes) is the storage allocated to all new Box accounts.

50GB (gigabytes) is the storage allocated to all new Box Project Directories.

Quotas on pre-existing Box accounts and Project Directories were determined based on account storage occupancy on 6/15/2020.

• Accounts with 40GB or less storage had their quota set to 50GB.
• Accounts over 40GB had a quota set that included a buffer for limited growth. The buffer ranged between 10GB and 100GB depending on the size of the account.
• Example 1: An account that had 60GB on 6/15/2020 had its quota set to 75GB.
• Example 2: An account that had 465GB on 6/15/2020 had its quota set to 565GB.

Yes

Every Monday we send an automated notification to all UW-Madison Box accounts with less than 10GB of storage remaining. For more information see UW-Madison Box - Quota notifications

Box does not provide any native tools for alerting users when they are approaching their quota limit. We do hope to improve our own notifications over time.

NO!

We will never automatically delete data owned by an active Box account.

When your Box account reaches your assigned quota you will notice the following:

• You, and collaborators, will no longer be able to upload files to folders Owned by your account.
• You will be unable to restore deleted items you own from your Trash.
• You will be able to view and download files normally.
• You will still be able to upload files to folders where you are a collaborator but not the Owner (co-owner, editor, uploader, etc).

You can view your current Box storage usage and quota in Account Settings from the Box WebApp. See UW-Madison Box - View Account Storage Usage and Limit for instructions.

Accounts that are already consuming more than 50GB of storage space will be allowed to keep that space. That may change over time as our available storage space is consumed.

Below are some exceptions to the statement above:

1. Backups: If you are using Box as a backup solution rather than for collaboration and sharing we request that you start investigating other solutions. Bucky Backup is a good place to start. Your department IT support may also have recommendations or local services dedicated to this purpose.
2. Personal Files: If you are using Box to store personal data we request that you create a Personal Box account for those files rather than consuming storage in the UW-Madison Box service.

At this time, we are not automatically reducing quotas on accounts. That may change over time as our available storage space is consumed. Any change to quotas will be broadly communicated to campus.

Long term we need the majority of accounts to be capped at 50GB, but we hope we can accomplish that primarily through attrition rather than actively shrinking accounts.

Maybe

We already have 2,000+ accounts that are at or over the 50GB limit. We expect to be able grant a limited number of accounts additional storage space up to 200GB. We are still asking individuals to pursue file cleanup before requesting more space and we are happy to provide file reports to assist you in cleanup. See UW-Madison Box - Storage and Quota Information

We continue to be very cautious about where we grant quota increases. If you require more storage space we request that you remove duplicate or unneeded files, move non-university files to a Personal account and move file backups to an alternative backup solution before requesting a Box Quota Increase.

No.

A number of groups have requested the ability to purchase additional Box storage. We are aware that there is campus interest in offering this as an option, but purchasing additional storage is not available at this time.

Not necessarily.

We expect the UW-Madison Box service to be part of the campus portfolio of services for the foreseeable future. However, we will no longer be able to provide box accounts with unlimited storage.

Below are the circumstances where we recommend that you transition to a different service:

1. Backups: If you are using Box as a backup solution rather than for collaboration and sharing we request that you start investigating other solutions. Bucky Backup is a good place to start. Your department IT support may also have recommendations or local services dedicated to this purpose.
2. Personal Files: If you are using Box to store personal data we request that you create a Personal Box account for those files rather than consuming storage in the UW-Madison Box service.
3. Just getting start with Box: If you or your team are just getting started with Box and you know you will need more than 50GB we recommend that you use a different cloud storage and collaboration service such as Google Drive or Office 365 OneDrive

There are a number of file storage options available both campus-wide and at the school/college/division level. We do not have a complete campus inventory at this time and we recognize that gap. Below is a partial list of DoIT led services, but please check back for updated information.

Campus File Storage:

• DoIT Shared Drive
• Research Drive

Consumer Cloud Collaboration and File Sharing:

• Office 365 - OneDrive
• G Suite - Shared Drive
• Box

Research Data Services (RDS) also maintains the handy UW-Madison Data Storage Finder.

We get this question a lot and there is not a simple answer. What we find is that file storage or file collaboration choices tend to follow group culture more closely than actual business requirements. We can offer some suggestions for things to think about when you are trying to select a solution.

1. Who will you be collaborating with?
2. Do all collaborators have access to the campus network or WiscVPN?
3. What file types do you work with most frequently? (e.g. Microsoft documents, Google docs, PDFs, images, video or sound files, raw datasets)
4. Do you require the ability to do real time co-authoring?
5. How much storage do you expect to require?
6. Is network performance likely to be an issue? (e.g real time data acquisition or processing)
7. What type of data are you storing (e.g. Public, Sensitive or Restricted data)?
8. Are you legally or contractually required to keep copies of the data for a specific length of time?

One of the barriers to providing good recommendations is that we do not have a complete inventory of storage options available campus-wide and at the school/college/division level. As we work to address that gap we hope to also provide a decision matrix that incorporates the questions listed above to assist in determining which solution or solutions you might select.

If you are a researcher on campus there are resources specifically for you. Research Data Services (RDS) can help with research data management and has a great matrix that outlines the Data Storage and Backup options recommended for researchers. The Research Cyberinfrastructure Strategic Initiative also provides technology and support to UW-Madison researchers.

No.

The Box Higher-Ed agreement specifically states that Box should not be used as a primary data back-up repository or for the storage of data that is not intended for regular access and use. We also expect future agreements to include stronger language regarding our obligation to enforce this provision.

We are aware that there are still many places where campus documentation recommends using Box for backups. We are working to locate document owners and updated directions appropriately.

Acceptable use of Information Technology Resources allows minimal use for private or personal purposes of most IT resources.

Storing non-university data in Box was not a concern when we had unlimited storage. With the change in Box contract we request that individuals using Box to store personal data create a Personal Box account for those files rather than consuming storage in the UW-Madison Box service.