We have a number of users who have MP3s in their home directories which are stored on our centralized file server. This has a negative affect on how long our backups take, how much drives space we need to have, etc. I thought about sending e-mails out for people to remove it with a notice that it would be deleted by a certain day but I don't feel that this is the right way to go about this. Many of these employees have music because it helps them work more efficiently and they don't have quantities that are excessive but the amount in sum across all the employees is still significant.
I have come up with a couple of ideas but each have their own problems:
- Idea: Allow Users to stream music instead of storing it
- Problem: Takes up too much bandwidth
- Idea: Move all the music to the users' local machines
- Problem: This would take significant effort on my department's part and we would then be responsible for doing things like redirecting the default directories for iTunes on people's computers so that data is stored locally
- Idea: Encourage people to purchase their own portable MP3 players by leveraging our corporate discount to offer employees discounted players
- Problem: Some of our users listen to podcasts, something that I have found extremely beneficial in my job, and may not have a computer at home to synchronize with
What are some good ways to handle respecting our users and getting the productivity and morale benefits that music affords without having to store users' music on our file server?
I'd be tempted to ask senior management just to send out a "remove and don't do it again" email - then you can do a monthly scan and give the management a list of those still doing it.
It's not a technical issue so don't make it one.
Whatever you do, you are going to need management support for it. IT can rarely set its own policies without this support (especially if your policy affects management - like if they are also storing mp3s on the server...) Users generally get upset when things stop working the way they always have as well so you are going to need to communicate with them BEFORE you make any changes too. Company storage of mp3s is not a good idea even if you don't have any SLA on the data and it could disappear at any time since it could lead to legal issues (can you be certain that NONE of the mp3s are copyrighted?). Again, this is a small chance, but it is still there.
Depending on your file server, you may be able to exclude certain file types from being stored at all, and you can usually exclude certain file types from backups as well depending on the backup software. Windows 2003 has File Server Resource Manager that allows you to set quotas, file screens, etc...
Exclude music and video directories from your backups entirely, and let your coworkers know that those directories are provided as-is, not backed up and they shouldn't put important stuff there.
If legal/copyright issues are a concern, have employees sign a waiver that says anything they put in those directories is solely their own responsibility.
I have seen a lot of companies where the IT department is a total pain-in-the-ass, making their coworkers miserable day after day. Please work hard towards not being one of those. Keep in mind that you are there to help your coworkers make the best of their working day :)
I'm afraid that there isn't an answer that either you or your users are going to like. This type of issue plagues many IT departments. I'm lucky because I work for a government agency, where it's strictly forbidden to rip MP3s to the network (for that matter, they're strictly prohibited from connecting ANY personal device to the network). We have specific policies in place prohibiting it.
We encourage people to bring portable radios or MP3 players instead. That's the easiest route.
Edited to add: The minute you lay your hands (IT) on this issue will be the minute that your users expect numerous things to happen. One, that you'll help them restore all the MP3s they deleted. Two, you'll help them rip CDs they brought. Three, make it easier for them to share music with other employees...and the list goes on and on.
This is a Pandora's box that you don't want to open my friend, because it will only end in frustration from an IT standpoint. DO NOT ALLOW THIS.
I had the same issue at my company, what I ended up doing in the end was creating a separate network share dedicated to music. Backups are limited to a single weekly sync. We call the share 'play', and its reserved for non-essential data, anything that ends up there might disappear forever :)
Bonus edit: just checked the share size:
Yikes!
I’m not an employer nor a sysadmin so I can only offer an employee’s perspective:
A company that bans me from storing music on my work PC sucks.
Of course finding a solution will cost resources (and effectively money). But so do all other investments for the employees, from the second monitor to a fridge full of milk and all the other stuff.
I was under the impression that abolishing fresh milk to cut costs is universally seen as a douchey move. In fact, Joel even uses this as a hook in a promo movie for Fog Creek, to offset himself from those big, unfriendly corporations.
If music makes programmers productive, giving them second-best solutions isn’t a smart move, in my opinion.
Instead of mandating portable MP3 players or blaring radios, can’t the company reserve a remote folder for storage that isn’t backed up?
Hardware is cheap, employees are expensive. If adding $100 in hardware/infrastructure and $50/mo in support costs PER USER allows your users to be even 5% more effective, then it is a good business decision. Buy more hard drives and a faster network for your backup system, or a faster network to allow streaming. Happy employees are productive employees.
One possibility is that you could create an MP3 share for every user on some USB drives hooked up to your system (or some sort of other cheaper storage) depending on the size of your company. The only downside is that you or your company might get in trouble if these are copyrighted mp3s -- that seems a bit paranoid to me for a small/medium company though.
You could then not worry about backing up these shares. Also, it wouldn't help the file storage issues but you could always exclude *.mp3 from backups. But then you might loose actual needed mp3 content.
My vote would be just to go and delete them periodically for anything outside of iTunes which you could control with the GPO. I think saying "No Music" would really hurt Moral, but I never got much kickback when trying to tell them that these files had to be local -- users were understanding. You can make a help document that explains how to move it and send automated warnings. You could even say it has to be legal data as well in that document.
To start I'd enforce quotas for the home directories and exclude *.mp3, *.mp4, *.ogg, *.wma *.whatever-other-stuff you don't want backed up.
No one seems to be mentioning the legal side of things here. There are huge copyright infringement issues surrounding storing MP3s on corporate servers. Any CIO worth his/her salt will ban MP3 storage on corporate PCs or servers.
I LMAO when I read "A company that bans me from storing music on my work PC sucks.", above.