When quotas take effect

Prerequisite for quotas to take effect

You must activate quotas on a per-volume basis before Data ONTAP applies quotas to quota targets. For more information about activating quotas, see Activating or reinitializing quotas.

Note
Quota activation persists across halts and reboots. You should not activate quotas in the /etc/rc file.

About quota initialization

After you turn on quotas, Data ONTAP performs quota initialization. This involves scanning the entire file system in a volume and reading from the /etc/quotas file to compute the disk usage for each quota target.

Quota initialization is necessary under the following circumstances:

You add an entry to the /etc/quotas file, but the quota target for that entry is not currently tracked by the storage system.
You change user mapping in the /etc/usermap.cfg file and you use the QUOTA_PERFORM_USER_MAPPING entry in the /etc/quotas file. For more information about QUOTA_PERFORM_USER_MAPPING, see Special entries for mapping users.
You change the security style of a qtree from UNIX to either mixed or NTFS.
You change the security style of a qtree from mixed or NTFS to UNIX.

Quota initialization can take a few minutes. The amount of time required depends on the size of the file system. During quota initialization, data access is not affected. However, quotas are not enforced until initialization completes.

For more information about quota initialization, see Activating or reinitializing quotas.

About changing a quota size

You can change the size of a quota that is being enforced. Resizing an existing quota, whether it is an explicit quota specified in the /etc/quotas file or a derived quota, does not require quota initialization. For more information about changing the size of a quota, see Modifying quotas.