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Quota limits

You can apply a disk space limit or limit the number of files for each quota type. If you do not specify a limit for a quota, none is applied.

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

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.

Disk space hard limit
Disk space limit applied to hard quotas.
Disk space soft limit
Disk space limit applied to soft quotas.
Threshold limit
Disk space limit applied to threshold quotas.
Files hard limit
The maximum number of files on a hard quota.
Files soft limit
The maximum number of files on a soft quota.