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Differences among hard, soft, and threshold quotas

Contributors netapp-dbagwell netapp-mwallis netapp-aherbin
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Hard quotas prevent operations while soft quotas trigger notifications.

Hard quotas impose a hard limit on system resources; any operation that would result in exceeding the limit fails. The following settings create hard quotas:

  • Disk Limit parameter

  • Files Limit parameter

Soft quotas send a warning message when resource usage reaches a certain level, but do not affect data access operations, so you can take appropriate action before the quota is exceeded. The following settings create soft quotas:

  • Threshold for Disk Limit parameter

  • Soft Disk Limit parameter

  • Soft Files Limit parameter

Threshold and Soft Disk quotas enable administrators to receive more than one notification about a quota. Typically, administrators set the Threshold for Disk Limit to a value that is only slightly smaller than the Disk Limit, so that the threshold provides a "final warning" before writes start to fail.