SQL Server Magazine

Microsoft has never included a quota management system in Windows NT--until now. NT Server 5.0 and NT Workstation 5.0 will be shipping with an integrated quota management system. Because Microsoft is including this system within the core NT operating system (OS), NT Server and NT Workstation customers can benefit from quota management features without purchasing additional software.

However, some industry experts say that NT 5.0's quota management system is too little, too late. Because the quota management system lacks directory-based quotas and is based on rigid partitioning, these experts believe it is inferior to other quota management solutions.

You need to decide for yourself about NT 5.0's quota management system. By reading the following information about how the quota management system works (be sure to read the sidebar "Frequently Asked Questions About Quotas," page 174) and by weighing the system's pros and cons, you can make an informed decision.

The Basics of the Quota Management System
Organizations of all sizes can take advantage of NT 5.0's quota management system. Large enterprises can use quotas to limit usage on workstation machines with multiple users. Small departments can limit permissions to a disk and then quota that disk for added protection against users consuming all disk space. The quota management system is flexible because it monitors and limits disk-space usage on a per user, per volume basis.

Per user. Ownership is the key to disk usage in NT 5.0. NT enforces per user quotas on only those files that users own. For example, if Bill modifies Jane's report without taking ownership of it, NT will apply that report's disk-space usage against Jane's quota. But if Bill takes ownership of the file, NT will reduce Jane's disk-space usage by the file's amount and increase Bill's disk-space usage by the same value.

Per volume. The quota management system works on NTFS volumes only. (You cannot use quotas with FAT drives.) In addition, because Microsoft revamped NTFS under NT 5.0, you can use the quota management system only on NTFS 5.0 volumes.

Each NTFS volume has a separate set of quotas, even if two volumes are on the same physical disk. Thus, you can better customize quotas to meet the needs of groups of users. For example, you can set the default quota to 20MB for all users on drive E and to 50MB for all users on drive F. However, having separate volume quotas means that if you have 12 NTFS volumes that need quotas, you will have to set and monitor the quotas on each volume separately. Fortunately, you can easily set up and monitor quotas.

Setting Up Disk Quotas
Suppose you want to use NT 5.0 beta 1's quota management system on an NTFS 5.0 volume on drive C. To set quotas, you must have administrator privileges on the local computer that holds the volume. If you do, here's how you set up a quota.

Under NT's Start menu, open Explorer, right-click drive C, select Properties, and click the Quota tab. A message will appear stating that you must upgrade to NTFS 5.0 to enable disk quotas. At first, this message might seem odd. Microsoft released NTFS 5.0 expressly for use in NT 5.0, so why doesn't NT 5.0 have NTFS 5.0 installed? Microsoft had a good reason to use NTFS 4.0 rather than NTFS 5.0 as the default format for a disk partition: to ensure volume compatibility with previous NT versions. In other words, an NTFS 5.0 volume cannot be read by an NT 4.0 (or earlier) server. So, if you want to use a previous NT version on your disk, do not upgrade to NTFS 5.0. However, if you don't upgrade to NTFS 5.0, you can't use quotas on that volume. (Microsoft is simplifying the NTFS 5.0 upgrade process, so the default for volumes in a future beta release of NT 5.0 might be NTFS 5.0.)

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