How to set GlusterFS quota limits

Setting quota limits on a GlusterFS volume keeps shared storage predictable by preventing a single directory tree from consuming all available capacity and forcing outages or emergency cleanup.

Quotas in GlusterFS are enforced using server-side accounting, so limits apply consistently to all clients regardless of where the volume is mounted. Limits are defined per path with gluster volume quota limit-usage, and they affect the specified directory and everything beneath it in the hierarchy.

Quota enforcement requires features.quota to be enabled on the volume, and usage values may briefly lag during initial accounting or heavy write bursts. Once a hard limit is reached, writes fail with standard filesystem quota errors, so applications and jobs that write into the limited path must handle Disk quota exceeded reliably.

1. Check that quota enforcement is enabled on the volume.

   $ sudo gluster volume get volume1 features.quota
   Option                                  Value
   ------                                  -----
   features.quota                          on

   features.quota must be on before any quota limit is enforced.

   Related: How to enable GlusterFS volume quotas

2. Create the target directory path on a mounted copy of the volume if it does not already exist.

   $ sudo mkdir -p /mnt/volume1/projects

   Run the command on a host where the volume is mounted, and replace /mnt/volume1 with that mount point.

3. Set a hard quota limit on the target directory path.

   $ sudo gluster volume quota volume1 limit-usage /projects 500GB
   volume quota: success

   Writes to /projects and its subdirectories fail with Disk quota exceeded once the hard limit is reached.

   Paths are relative to the volume root, not the client mount point.

4. List quota entries to confirm the configured limit and available space.

   $ sudo gluster volume quota volume1 list
   Path               Hard-limit  Soft-limit  Used   Available
   -----------------------------------------------------------
   /projects          500.0GB     0B          0B     500.0GB

   Used and Available can lag briefly on busy volumes due to quota accounting updates.