Overview of the quota process
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:
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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.
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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.
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Whether a write operation will not exceed the soft limit
If yes, the write operation succeeds and no notification is sent.