Computing Resource Quotas Policy

Summary of Policy

Users do not have unlimited access to CSE's computing resources. Disk usage, printing and internet traffic (excluding email) all have per-user quotas. Base quotas are set in appropriate classes in the User DataBase (UDB) for the various categories of user at CSE. Additional quota must be requested from System Support or purchased.

History of Policy

(March, 2004 - Previous revision (avg 50% increase in disk quotas))
12 April, 2005 - First revision in online form. Substantial base disk quota increases for most classifications.
19 June, 2006 - Added new proposed numbers
27 Oct, 2008 - Updated with latest numbers
27 May, 2013 - Updated with latest numbers

Who This Policy Applies To

All users

Who Maintains This Policy

Computer Support Group, CSE Computing Committee

Policy Description

This policy is broken down by user classification. Some users will fall inside several classifications. All users should fall under at least one classification (otherwise they wouldn't have any resources).

Base allocations

Current allocation numbers:

Green indicates an increase since the previous policy revision (up to 100%)
Blue indicates an increase of 100% or more
Red indicates a decrease in quota

Classification	Disk Quota	IP Quota	Print Quota
Enrolled in CSE Program	160MB	750MB	100 pages
Enrolled in non-CSE Program	80MB	750MB	100 pages
Enrolled in a CSE subject (#)	60MB	unlimited	150 pages
Undergraduate thesis students	500MB	unlimited	1000 pages
Postgraduate research students	1000MB	unlimited	1000 pages
Staff	2000MB	unlimited	100000 pages
Visitor/Conjoint accounts	as per staff		1000 pages
Casual tutors (base)	nil	1000MB	1000 pages
Casual tutors (#)	120MB	100MB	750 pages
Student Executive (societies)	100MB	400MB	200 pages
Courtesy accounts	200MB	50MB	1000 pages

(#) These allocations are received per subject.

General Notes:

Students get quota once for being in a program, and again for each course (subject) that they are enrolled in.
Some subjects have special needs, and thus may have additional resource quotas

Additional allocations

The following guidelines are to help People.SystemSupport handle additional resource requests. The numbers are given as Maximum/Suggested increments. The maximum is inclusive of the base allocation. The suggested increments are for when there is no clear need for a larger increment (up to the maximum). Disk quotas are for primary fileservers.

Classification	Disk Quota	Print Quota
Undergraduate thesis students	? (1GB/100MB,250MB,500MB)	?
Postgraduate research students	2GB/100MB,200MB,500MB,1GB(2GB/500MB,1GB)	?/500,1000 pages
Staff/Visitor/Conjoint	5GB/100MB,200MB,500MB,1GB,2GB(5GB/1GB,2GB)	n/a

All student requests must be approved by the student's academic supervisor.
All staff requests must be approved by the staff member's supervisor, if applicable.
Colour print quota: Postgraduate students may be allocated a one-off colour quota of up to 500 pages. This is representative of their being around for a number of years and is the culmination of their thesis (printing it).

This approval represents an acknowledgement that the person's research/function requires the additional resources. In some cases, additional funding may be requested to cover the resource costs.

When a user requires further disk quota, they will need to move their home directory to another machine. A rough guide for such home directories is 1GB base, up to 10GB maximum. Unlimited space (up to disk size) can be used if a scratch space is allocated. A scratch space is not backed up, but also not quota-ed.

Checking your current allocation

Disk Quota

You can check your current disk quota, and current disk usage by running the disk_guess command. Typical output of this command will look like the following:

You are currently using 8880K which is below your quota of 22528K
Your 6 biggest files are:
<list of files here>

Your 6 biggest directories are:
<list of directories here>

It will also alert you to files which you may not wish to keep in your account, such as core files and .o files. You can get a less detailed output of your disk usage by running the rquota command.

The acc explain=dlimit will also show you a breakdown of your quota, showing you why your quota is set to the value it is. If acc and rquota show different numbers, then you probably have a preserved disk quota, which is only temporary at the start of sessions to iron out ripples in quotas as class allocations vary.

Print Quota

Your current print quota and print usage can be seen in the output of acc. When you run the acc command, you will see some lines relating to your print quota, such as

 Printer Usage Status : Post-census Allocation      3585
                      : Purchased                     75
                      : Used                        1072
                      : Available                   2588

The Post-census Allocation refers to how many printing pages you have been allocated due to being enrolled in CSE programs and courses. If your Available quota is 0 or less, you will not be able to print, and will need to purchase more print quota to be able to continue printing (or, in the case of research/thesis students, more may be able to be requested by your supervsior on your behalf). See the CSE Help Desk to purchase more quota.

More detailed information with regards to your printing can be obtained through the priv pquota command. This will show you how many pages you have printed out each day, and give approximate times for the printing. priv pquota -v will show you each print job you have sent, how many pages it was, which computer it was printed from and which printer it was sent to.

IP Quota

Your current IP quota can be seen in the output of ipq, or acc (note that acc is only updated once each day). Detailed information on your usage and allocation can be found using a combination of priv ipq_explain, priv ipq_summary, and priv ipq_list.

Presently, many people at CSE have unlimited IP Quota. However, network usage for each account is still recorded.

Implementation

When implementing quota increases, decrease additional quotas of all children by the relevant amount, so that any with additional allocations do not get further increases.

For example, say old staff quotas were 200MB, and new 500MB. Also, employee abc has 600MB total disk quota (200MB + 400 additional). When staff quotas are increased, their additional allocation should be reduced by 300MB to keep the total balanced. Resulting in 500MB + 100 additional.

Also take note to apply the above to sub-classes as well as users. Subjects with extra quota allocations should be equivalently balanced.

Technical Notes

Relevant UDB fields (all are cumulative from subclasses):

Disk Quota: dlimit, plus the following which should never be used directly: temporarydlimit, preservedlimit
Print Quota: baseprintallocation, equinoxprintallocation, solsticeprintallocation. Additional allocations are stored in the print quota system.
IP Quota: ipqbase, ipqequinox, ipqsolstice. Additional allocations are stored in the IP Quota system.

-- SimonB - 12 Apr 2005 -- RobLawther - 23 Jun 2005

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Resource quotas policy