Win2003 Server disk quotas are revealed

Microsoft Windows disk quota management has been in use since the Windows 2000 system, it is very important for the server's valuable disk space management. This article will introduce you to the disk management features of the Windows Server 2003 system.

First, Windows Server 2003 disk quota basis

In the Windows Server 2003 system disk quota, we can mainly understand the following aspects.

1. Quotas and Users

Disk quotas monitor the volume usage of individual users, so each user's utilization of disk space does not affect the disk quotas of other users on the same volume. For example, if the quota limit for volume F is 500 MB and the user has saved a 500 MB file in volume F, then the user must first delete or move some existing files from it before writing other data to the volume. However, as long as there is enough space, each other user can save up to 500MB of files in the volume.

Disk quotas are based on file ownership and are not limited by the folder location of user files in the volume. For example, if a user moves a file from one folder to another on the same volume, the volume space usage does not change. However, if the user copies the files to a different folder on the same volume, the volume space usage will be doubled. Or, if another user creates a 200KB file and you take ownership of the file, the user's disk usage will be reduced by 200KB, and your disk usage will increase by 200KB.

2. Quotas and Volumes

Disk quotas are only applied to volumes and are not affected by the folder structure of the volume and the layout on the physical disk. If the volume has multiple folders, the quota assigned to the volume is applied entirely to all folders. For example, if \\ProductionQA and \\ProductionPublic are shared folders on the F volume, the files that users store in these folders cannot use more disk space than the F volume quota limit setting.

If a single physical disk contains multiple volumes and a quota is applied to each volume, each volume quota is only appropriate for a particular volume. For example, if you share two different volumes, F and G, respectively, the quotas for the two volumes are tracked separately, even if the two volumes are on the same physical disk.

If a volume spans multiple physical disks, the entire spanned volume uses the same quota for that volume. For example, if the F volume has a quota of 500MB, you cannot save more than 500MB of files to the F volume regardless of whether the F volume is on a physical disk or across three disks.
3. Quota Item Updates

In the NTFS file system, volume usage information is stored by user security identifier (SID) instead of by user account name. The first time you open the Quota Entries window, disk quotas must obtain user account names from network domain controllers or local users and groups, match those user account names with the current volume user's SID, and populate the name with the username. "The items on the column. When these names are obtained from a domain controller or local users and groups, the name will appear in this field. The process begins immediately when you first view the quota entry.

Once you have the name, you can save it to a cache file in your application's Application Data directory (ApplicationDataMicrosoftWindowsNTDiskQuota) so that you can use these names the next time you open the Quota Entries window. However, because these cache files may be used for several days without being updated by Windows, the Quota Entries window may not reflect the changes made to the list of domain user accounts after viewing the quota entries.

To get the latest username, press F5. Windows will then refresh the username of each user from the network domain controller or local users and groups. Depending on the number of volume users and the current network speed, this process can take several minutes. In the process, if you want to see the name of a particular user as soon as possible, you can select the item and move it to the top of the list.

4. Quotas and Volumes Converted to NTFS

Disk Quotas Process all NTFS volumes on computers running Windows 2000, Windows XP, or Windows Server 2003 family operating systems. However, files on volumes that have been converted from FAT or FAT32 to NTFS will automatically be attributed to the administrator, so quotas on these files will be managed by the Administrator account. This is hardly a problem because the administrator has unlimited volume usage rights. This issue only applies to files that existed before conversion to NTFS, and the files after conversion will belong to the appropriate user.

Because disk quotas are based on file ownership, any changes to the volume that affect file ownership status, including file system conversions, can affect disk quotas for that volume. Therefore, before an existing volume is converted from one file system volume to another, you should be aware that this conversion may cause a change in ownership.

5. Local and Remote Disk Quota Operations

You can enable disk quotas on NTFS volumes on local and remote computers. Disk quotas can be used to limit the amount of volume space for different users logged into the local machine and to limit the use of volumes by remote users.
You can use quotas to ensure that:

Multiple users logging in to the same computer do not interfere with the ability of other users to work.
One or more users do not exclusively occupy disk space on the public server.
In the shared folder of the personal computer, the user does not use too much disk space.

To enable quotas on remote machine volumes, they must be shared from the root of the volume and you must be a member of the Administrators group of the remote computer. In addition, these volumes must be formatted as NTFS and exist on computers running Windows 2000, Windows XP, or Windows Server 2003 family operating systems.

When implementing disk quotas on system volumes, you should consider the disk space used by Windows files. Depending on the available space on the volume, you may have to set a high quota limit or not limit disk space for users who install Windows. This is not required if Windows is installed by an administrator. Because the administrator and members of the Administrators group have unrestricted quota limits.
Second, the role of Windows Server 2003 disk management

Windows Server 2003 system NTFS file system supports user disk quota management, which can effectively manage the user's network disk space usage. Disk quota tracking for NTFS volumes and control of disk space usage. Administrators can configure Windows to:

Prevent further use of disk space and log events when a user exceeds the specified disk space limit (that is, the amount of disk space allowed by the user).
Logs an event when the user exceeds the specified disk space warning level (that is, the point at which the user is close to their quota limit).

When you enable disk quotas, you can set two values: disk quota limit and disk quota warning level. For example, you can set the user's disk quota limit to 500MB and set the disk quota warning level to 450MB. In this case, the user can store files of up to 500MB on the volume. If the user has more than 450MB of files stored on the volume, the disk quota system can be configured to log system events. Only members of the Administrators group can manage quotas on a volume.

You can specify that users can exceed their quota limits. If you do not want to deny users access to the volume but want to track each user's disk space usage, you can enable quotas and not limit disk space usage. You can also specify whether events should be logged regardless of whether the user exceeds the quota warning level or exceeds the quota limit.

After enabling disk quotas for a volume, the system automatically tracks the use of the volume by all users from then on. As long as the volume is formatted with the NTFS file system, quotas can be enabled on local volumes, network volumes, and removable drives. In addition, network volumes must be shared from the root of the volume, and removable drives must also be shared. The Windows installation will automatically upgrade the volumes formatted with the NTFS version in Windows NT 4.0.

Because compressed files are tracked by their uncompressed size, file compression cannot be used to prevent users from exceeding their quota limits. For example, if a 50MB file is 40MB after compression, Windows will calculate the quota limit based on the original 50MB file size.

User disk quota management is an important task in server management, especially in large enterprise networks. The network disk space is very limited. If the user disk quota is not properly managed, the network disk space will be caused on the one hand. A lot of waste, on the other hand, may also bring serious insecurities, and can seriously affect the overall network performance, users may not be able to log in.