Providing file storage & web space for students: which path to take?

Since December 1996, Northwestern University has provided students, staff, and faculty with a small amount of online space for web development. Since that time, much has changed in the web-publishing world: most notably, users have become more web-savvy, and web pages have become more complex and graphics-heavy. Is providing members of the University community with 4 MB really a benefit anymore?.Northwestern has the perfect opportunity to reevaluate its "Pubweb" service because the current hardware machine will be ending its maintenance contract. In addition to web publishing space, the University has been evaluating the need for ubiquitous network file storage for its students, faculty and staff. This seems to be a service that would be valuable in a well-wired community.However, web hosting and network storage are both commodity services easily available on the Internet. Some of these services are still freely available, but unfortunately, several of the larger vendors in these areas haven been forced to abandon the idea of free storage and adopt a subscription-based model.Northwestern has therefore been faced with a two-fold dilemma: (1) should the University continue to provide web-publishing space? and (2) should the University expand its service to include file storage space? If so, what is the most stable, cost-effective solution for a mixed-platform computing environment? Perhaps even more importantly, how critical are such services in the pursuit of becoming a well-wired university?.Although Northwestern has not yet implemented a solution, the paper will evaluate the storage options under consideration (i.e., in-house solutions including Windows 2000 Server, UNIX, and NAS, as well as outsourcing solutions), and explore the greater issue of whether network storage is a valuable service for the University community.