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Data Storage and Collaboration Options
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Overview
There are many options you can use for data storage, sharing and collaboration. Each has different features, licensing, and limitations. The following charts may help you find which one, or ones, are right for you.
Individual MIT Solutions
These options are offered by MIT/IS&T to meet the storage needs of community members. Your account and authentication are tied to your MIT Kerberos identity, and will be deactivated with that account after you leave MIT.
| MIT Dropbox | MIT One Drive | MIT Google Drive |
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|---|---|---|---|
| Default Plans (Free) |
10TB Faculty 500GB all others |
5TB | Unlimited¹ |
| Additional Plans | $500/year for 1TB $2,500/year 5TB $5,000/yr for 10TB |
Team Sites up to 25TB |
Not Applicable |
| Local Storage Sync |
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| Selective Sync² | |
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| Easy File Sharing |
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| Easy Doc Collaboration |
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| Link-based Sharing |
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| Folder-based Sharing |
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| Link-based Access Control | |
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| Version History and Recovery |
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| Recover Deleted Files |
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| Groups Support | |
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 ³ |
| Moira Group Integration | |
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| MIT Touchstone Integration | |
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| MIT Data Protection Review | |
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| API Access | |
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| Supports Data Preservation/Retention | |
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| Unlimited Retrieval (not metered) | |
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Group/Team Enterprise Solutions
MIT and external providers offer many storage solutions for enterprise research, business, and academic data storage. Storage agreements include information about expected service level for availability, access, space, and resilience. Cost is tied to expected service levels and storage can be scaled as needed at predictable pricing.
MIT has an Internet2/Net+ pricing agreement with Amazon Web Services (AWS) which offers a number of storage solutions for different requirements and offers other storage hosting options. Explore the links below and contact the service providers to find out more.
- MIT Dropbox Team Folders
- Team Folders Overview
- Request via the The MIT Service Desk
- MIT OneDrive SharePoint Team Project Folders
- How SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business interact with Microsoft Teams
- MIT account holders can create their own SharePoint Team Sites
- MIT G Suite Shared Drives
- Google Drive Landing Page
- Google Shared Drives are a G Suite for Education feature similar to Dropbox Team Folders or OneDrive Project Folders
- Google Shared Drives are a good solution for G Suite users wanting team storage tied to a group of people rather than a specific individual
- Shared Drives limits
- Request via the The MIT Service Desk
- Amazon Web Services (AWS) S3: Standard, Infrequent Access and Glacier
Personal Non-MIT Solutions
In addition to the MIT options above, there are many personal cloud storage options that each have their pluses and minuses with a wide variety of pricing plans. Review your options to determine what service meets your service needs and budget the best. Also consider contacting IS&T before you purchase to make sure the MIT offerings can't meet your unique needs at a better price.
Some personal storage options to explore are:
 | Use a non-MIT email address if possible to avoid conflicts If you do purchase personal storage, we recommend signing up with a non-MIT email address to avoid conflicts with MIT services and to ensure you have access to your data if you decide to leave MIT. |
Notes
1. Google's "Unlimited Storage" offering is bundled into G Suite for Education and governed under the terms and conditions of that service offering. Google may change bundled storage offerings and/or their terms and conditions at any time (and have done so in the past). There are limits on daily transfers and API access and Google reserves the right to suspend accounts without notice to safeguard the integrity of their services.
2. Selective sync, the ability to only synchronize some or none of your files to your local disk drive, and access other files over the network when you need them, or download them on demand, varies in functionality and availability both by service and platform. If this is a critical feature, we recommend you familiarize yourself with the details and limitations of the feature for your chosen service and platform before you decide. (Examples: Google makes different clients available for sync and on-demand file access, Google Drive and Google Filestream. Microsoft OneDrive offers selective sync by folder, and on Windows can emulate a network file system.)
3. Groups are not currently supported in MIT's G Suite for Education environment, but will become active once single sign-on and directory integration are built out. In Google's language, the commitment to this integration is currently directional, but we do not have a release timeframe for it.
4. MIT's G Suite for Education environment is not currently integrated with MIT Touchstone. User accounts are available and provisioned with your MIT email address as a username, and a local Google password. MIT Touchstone integration is planned, although we do not have a timeframe for it yet, so accounts must map to existing MIT user accounts.
