You are here

Dynamic AFS quotas

Every user of Informatics AFS filespace has a maximum AFS quota (see AFS Quotas for details) and a current quota. To make best use of our disk space, we do not give everyone their maximum quota all at once. Instead we grow their current quota as their disk usage increases.

For example, consider a student with a maximum quota of 5GB. If they only have 1.5GB of data, their current AFS quota will be 3GB. When their files grow to within 600MB of their current AFS quota (3GB in this example) then it will automatically be increased by 1GB - in this example it would increase to 4GB. This process continues until the maximum quota has been reached - in this example 5GB.

This allows us to make better use of our disk space, but it creates a problem for anyone who needs to copy a large amount of data to their home directory, because they can copy less than 2GB before reaching their actual quota. The automatic quota increase runs hourly, so they could then have to wait up to an hour before their quota was automatically increased.

If you know that you will need to create a large amount of data in one go, please ask (via the Support Form) for your dynamic quota to be increased to the maximum value.

Tools like freespace and fs listquota show you your current AFS quota - which may be less than the maximum quota that you're entitled to.

Last reviewed: 
13/04/2023

System Status

Home dirs (AFS)
Network
Mail
Other services
University services
Scheduled downtime

Choose a topic