Tips & Tricks Volume 1: Put SmartQuota to use

SpaceGuard SRM 5.0, the successor to SpaceGuard 4.2, provides system administrators with the ability to deploy quotas to hundreds or thousands of directories with ease, this is accomplished using quota policies.  A quota policy is a pre-configured set of quotas limits and alarm actions associated with those limits.

After a quota policy has been applied to any number of directories, the quota limits set on those directories can be easily reconfigured via SmartQuota technology.  SmartQuota technology changes the size of all selected quotas by a percentage or absolute value.  There are a number of scenarios where this feature becomes extremely useful.

SCENARIO 1

It has been decided that an entire volume, on the file server, should be allotted exclusively to domain user home directories.  Each user should receive an equal share of that volume.  Quotas are already in place.

1.) In the "Quota overview for computer: X" window select all home directories (quotas) on the volume by using Ctrl+click or Shift+click
2.) Right-click the selected quotas and choose "Edit size...", the following dialog appears:

3.) Take the total number of quotas selected and divide by 100, write down this value
4.) Choose the "Set to percentage of current logical disk size" radio button, enter the value computed in step 3, click "OK."

If the there were 10 quotas on a volume that was 10 GB, each quota would be set to 1GB.

SCENARIO 2

Users are constantly complaining that the quotas in place are too restricting.  They spend more time managing and deleting files than working on them.  The general consensus among the users is that they need double the space.

1.) In the "Quota overview for computer: X" window select all the quotas that should be modified using Ctrl+click or Shift+click
2.) Right-click the selected quotas and choose "Edit size...", the following dialog appears:

3.) Choose the "Add percentage" radio button, this is the default selection
4.) Enter a value of 100, click "OK."

SCENARIO 3

A new company document has been created.  The document is in PDF format and is 50MB.  The document will be placed in a share that currently has a 100MB quota on it.  Placing this new document in the share would take up 50% of the total quota size.  The size of the quota should be increased by 50MB to accommodate the new document.

1.) In the "Quota overview for computer: X" window select the quota that should be modified
2.) Right-click the selected quota and choose "Edit size...", the following dialog appears:

3.) Choose the "Add absolute value" radio button
4.) Enter a value of 50 MB, click "OK."