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Isilon quotas - directory or user?
I am planning a migration from a windows file server to my Isilon and am trying to figure out the best way to manage my users home shares. We have 2500 shares ranging from 10 MB to 50 GB with a majority of the users under 10 GB. My organization is going to double in size and I wanted to see if others have run into any problems managing home shares using directory quotas. I understand this route will require more manual work that can be accomplished through scripting, but will also give us more control.
Do others prefer to use the user directory quota? I noticed that when I copy over the directories to a test user quota directory, it will not pick up the data that I copied over.
Example: I create a 300 MB quota and copy over 200 MB before attaching the user. When I assign the home directory to the user, it shows that 0 MB of that quota is being used.
Any feedback would be appreciated.
Thank you
sluetze
300 Posts
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June 9th, 2015 23:00
Hi Mariog
userquota is calculated with the filespace the files of a specific user use.
Since YOU copied the data, YOU are the owner of these files and they will NOT take part in the calculated "used space" of another user but you.
This is why I would recommend you to use directoryquotas. They are much easier to understand for the user and you do not consume any space in this directory which you don’t see in the quotation. Also cases in which your administrators restore files or copy files to the specific homedrive do not pass by the quotation. Since in a normal environment only one user and the administrators have access to the homedirectory the directoryquota does exactly what you need it to do.
For me (in my workload and my environment) the userquota would only be useful on groupdrives to audit specific users.
If you have to (for any reasons) use the userquota, after migration use setacl.exe or any other tool to set the owner of all files in the homedirectory to the user who owns the homedirectory.
Docu50238 (Isilon Guidelines for Large Workloads) do not show any quota-limitation, but a share limit of 10K (which is also not recommended). So please use a central share and map the subfolders as (
cluster\Homes$\user1
cluster\Homes$\user2
cluster\Homes$\user2>)
In my environment we have more than 10K directoryquotas on a three node cluster and do not face any problems. This does NOT mean you won’t get any
Regards
sluetze
carlilek
205 Posts
1
June 9th, 2015 17:00
When you assign a quota, it must be calculated. After the initial calculation, the quota will be updated on the fly unless the quota itself is changed (modified, removed, re-added, etc.). So give it a few minutes before you check the quota size.
I have never used user quotas (I plan to look into it at some point), but we keep our labs (read departments) under quota with home directories being mounted under that quota. So each lab has its own quota, but not individual members. I imagine keeping over 2500 (5000?) quotas would be extraordinarily cumbersome, and you may want to look up how many quotas an Isilon cluster can have.
We have around 200 quotas on our 60 node cluster and ~300 SMB shares.
Peter_Sero
1.2K Posts
1
June 10th, 2015 02:00
For home directories we prefer directory quotas rather than user quotas, because only directory quotas provide the users with a view to limit and consumption sizes right on their client machines. Just make sure to enable the "container flag" for each directory quota.
hth
-- Peter
Anonymous User
170 Posts
1
June 10th, 2015 06:00
We use quotas A LOT. We're primarily an NFS shop but our home areas have a directory quota for the entire volume, a default-user quota, and then individual unlinked user quotas for the exceptions.
Every new volume automatically gets quotas turned on, even if they're non-enforcing, so that we can track the space down to individual users.
We have project areas that follow the same scheme. Some have per-user enforcing limits and some don't. We also have cases where we may have a role account that doesn't have an enforcing quota on a volume whereas normal users do.
mariog14
7 Posts
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June 10th, 2015 07:00
Thank you everyone for your feedback. I looked into maximums and Docu52076 shows a quota limit of 20,000. I will be going the directory quota route. We have a 4 node system and sluetze having a similar configuration with 10K quotas assisted me with my concerns for the future. I am going to leave the option open for user quotas within the same structure just in case we do find a need.
sluetze
300 Posts
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June 10th, 2015 23:00
hi mariog,
don't misunderstand me. I do not have 10K Shares on one cluster and I would not recommend that. I have 10K quotas.
mariog14
7 Posts
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June 11th, 2015 14:00
Thanks sluetze, I meant to type quotas. I have corrected it in my response.