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Quota process

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Quotas provide a way to restrict or track the disk space and number of files used by a user, group, or qtree. Quotas are applied to a specific FlexVol volume or qtree.

Quotas can be soft or hard. Soft quotas cause ONTAP to send a notification when specified limits are exceeded, and hard quotas prevent a write operation from succeeding when specified limits are exceeded.

When ONTAP receives a request from a user or user group to write to a FlexVol volume, it checks to see whether quotas are activated on that volume for the user or user group and determines the following:

  • Whether the hard limit will be reached

    If yes, the write operation fails when the hard limit is reached and the hard quota notification is sent.

  • Whether the soft limit will be breached

    If yes, the write operation succeeds when the soft limit is breached and the soft quota notification is sent.

  • Whether a write operation will not exceed the soft limit

    If yes, the write operation succeeds and no notification is sent.