About quotas and locks

If you are using Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services in a large deployment, such as at an Internet service provider (ISP) or in a large intranet, you need to maintain control over server resources and carefully monitor areas such as storage space and site security. You must ensure that one site cannot deplete so many resources that other sites can no longer function. Windows SharePoint Services allows you to specify quotas for sites, so that you can manage site and server resources. You can set quota limits for the following items:

Storage When you set a quota limit for storage, you set two values: a warning value and a maximum value. When a site passes the warning limit, Windows SharePoint Services sends an e-mail message to the site administrator and owner notifying them that the site is near to its storage quota. When a site meets the maximum limit, Windows SharePoint Services sends another e-mail message to the owner and administrator, and users are prevented from adding content to the site.
Note The size of the data reported by quotas does not necessarily match the size of the actual storage used on the database server. This is because the quota feature estimates storage figures for empty sites (sites that contain no user content) and includes those figures in the quota, as well as the actual storage from the content database. The estimated size of an empty site includes the real size of the template pages for Windows SharePoint Services, such as the forms pages and pages in the _layouts directory. These pages are not normally included in the estimate, since there is only one copy of these pages for all sites. Although each site has a unique URL to the pages, the site does not have a unique instance of the page.
Users When using the Active Directory directory service, you can limit the number of users that are added to Active Directory from any specific SharePoint site collection. When you specify a quota for user accounts, you specify a maximum limit only. When the maximum number of users for a site collection has been reached, no additional user accounts can be added unless one or more user accounts are deleted from the site collection.

You can create multiple sets of quotas, called quota templates, and use them in different areas of the server farm, or to suit different users. For example, if the deployment supports an Internet service provider (ISP), you might implement the following quota templates:

Free Apply to free or demo sites, restricts users to 10 MB of storage and 5 users.
Standard Apply to monthly-fee sites, allows site owners up to 25 MB of storage and 50 registered users.
Premium Apply to extranet sites for large corporate customers, allows organizations up to 10 GB of storage and 5000 user accounts.

You must be an administrator of the local server computer, or a member of the SharePoint Administrators group to be able to manage quotas and quota templates.

About enabling quotas

By default, Windows SharePoint Services disables the quota feature. There are no default quota values or templates. To enable quotas, use the following methods:

To use quotas for your server or server farm, create a quota template.
To use quotas for a specific virtual server, assign a default quota template to that virtual server.
To use quotas for a particular top-level Web site, assign a quota template to the top-level Web site when you create the site.
To use a set of quota values for a single site only, apply specific quota limits to the site itself, independent of any quota template.

You can implement quotas at any point in the logical deployment of Windows SharePoint Services. For example, applying a default quota template to a virtual server enables the ability to apply quota limits but does not require their use on all top-level Web sites under that virtual server. You can also change site settings at any time.

About quota templates

Windows SharePoint Services stores quota templates and their settings in the configuration database for a server or server farm. Windows SharePoint Services applies quota values to top-level Web sites when you create a top-level Web site. You can specify a default template to use for all top-level Web sites created on a virtual server or you can specify the template to use when you create the top-level Web site.

Note Windows SharePoint Services copies the values listed in the quota template into the database when a site is created. If you change the values for a quota template, those changes apply only to new top-level Web sites created using that template, not to existing top-level Web sites. To apply the template changes to existing sites, you must use the Windows SharePoint Services object model to make the change by using an SQL query. When you delete a quota template, Windows SharePoint Services removes the template from the configuration database, but any top-level Web sites created using that template retain the quota values. To remove quotas from all sites using a specific quota template, you must use the object model and perform an SQL query.

About specifying quota values for a specific site

You can specify a different set of limits for a specific site. This allows you to turn on quotas on a site-by-site basis or to make an exception to a quota template for a specific site.

Caution You can lock a site by changing the quota value. If you already specified quota values for a site, and want to update the value, it is important that you check the current quota levels before making the change. For example, if the current quota level for site storage is 25 MB, and a site has 21 MB in storage and you change the value to 20 MB, the site is locked as soon as you save the change. To prevent locking a site accidentally, check the current storage or user count for the site before changing the quota values.

To view existing quota values for a site, use SharePoint Central Administration to view the current values and the current amount of storage used and number of users.

About managing locks

You can use locks to stop sites from exceeding your storage quota limits, and to block all users from accessing a site if necessary. Windows SharePoint Services locks sites automatically when they exceed the maximum storage quota. You can also lock a site manually if, for example, it is in violation of site use policies. Depending on the type of lock, the result of a locked site is different:

When a site is locked for exceeding a storage quota limit, users who attempt to upload new content see a disk full error.
When a site is locked manually, users who attempt to view the site will see an access denied message.

You can unlock sites by different methods, depending on the reason for the lock. Site administrators can unlock sites by themselves if the sites are locked for exceeding quota limits. Only a server administrator can clear a manual lock.

About quotas and locks

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