WinQuota 3.0 user guide

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Table of contents

• Understanding Quota Management
• WinQuota Versions
• Operating with WinQuota Control Panel
  • Control Panel overview
  • Importing existing quota settings
  • Adding new quota limit
  • Managing users and groups
  • Editing quota settings
  • Removing quota settings
  • Applying quota settings
  • Checking and repairing quota settings
  • Analyzing quota settings
  • Managing notifications
  • Adding new notification
  • Managing exclude lists
  • Special cases
    • Administrative accounts
    • Managing administrative accounts
    • Bypassing quota accounting
  • Registering your copy of WinQuota
• Operating with Windows NT Explorer Shell Extensions
  • Choosing directory
  • Managing Quota Settings
  • Adding new Quota Entity
  • Changing Existing Quota Entity Values
  • Managing notifications
  • Adding new notification
• Operating with WinQuota Web Console
  • Configuring WinQuota Web Console
  • Adding new quota limit
  • Editing quota settings
  • Removing quota settings
  • Managing exclude lists
  • Managing administrative accounts
  • Managing notifications
  • Adding new notification
• WinQuota and SNMP

Understanding Quota Management

Any type of subject can be specified, including local or domain users and groups. Typical settings are shown below:

All quota changes will be verified every time user performs any file operation. If no settings were applied for the user, the primary group will be inspected. If no limits found, all group limitations will be checked for all groups, containing user credentials that are currently operated. And if none of these settings are found, 'anyone' credential will be used to check quota limitations.

Settings displayed above will be applied to all files and sub-directories recursively in C:\QTEST directory. All other subjects which are not gained into administrators, power users or guests, will have only "Anyone" limitations (for example, there are Domain Admins).

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WinQuota Versions

Since version 3.0, WinQuota have splitted into different versions:

• Professional. This version is oriented to small and medium organizations, up to hundreds of users and few servers. This version have no SNMP support, no Web Console, and no other enterprise level features.
  
  
• Corporate. It is a full version of WinQuota, including redesigned and more efficient ways to browse your Active directory forests, with SNMP support, WinQuota Web Console, Windows Clustering support, and various server architectures support (see features for details.

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Operating with WinQuota Control Panel

WinQuota Control Panel is a new way to manage your quota settings; it provides consolidated way to maintain all common and usual operations, beginning with adding new limits and notifications, managing existing limits, checking quota settings, and more. This way works with close integration with other parts of WinQuota, such as shell extensions.

Control Panel overview

The control panel provides way to manage all known limits were applied for all drives, in one consolidated list as the following image displays:

At this picture:

• left column indicates which subject is being evolved for quota limits,
• three next columns indicate hard limits, soft limits, and space being allocated. Note: if such folders were splitted among many subjects, each subject will be counted individually,
• usage in percent for every limit,
• the folder where limits were specified,
• each background indicates different states, like quota not used (as image displays), possible errors (different scale of red depending on severity), and state "many free place" as green color scale.

All operations are available through menus.

Importing existing quota settings

The first step to use WinQuota Control Panel 3.0 is importing all settings made in previous versions (if exists). WinQuota Control Panel enumerates all available drives by progress indication; the scanning process can be stopped any time as the following picture displays:

At this picture is shown scanning process of your drives, with actual settings found. You don't need to enforce scanning process often; all further modifications will be cached automatically.

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Adding new quota limit

As WinQuota Control Panel operates with all quota settings centralized, you need to specify a root folder to be limited with quotas.

As the folder is chosen, you need to specify credentials to be played. Credential choosing dialog allows enumerating all users in the system, including local users and groups, domain users and groups (in case computer is involved into corporal network). WinQuota works with domain structure from NT4WS to Win2K3, including Active Directory support. This dialog supports asynchronous data retrieval mechanisms, and representation of users, domains and groups as shown below:

And the final step is specifying values for hard and soft limits. The suffixes “K”, “M”, and “G” are applicable to indicate
kilo-, mega-, or gigabytes appropriately. Quota settings dialog provides basic facilities to change quota settings:

This dialog shows the initial path related to quota checks being modified, user, credentials belong to, and current settings to be applied.

Note: The changes are deferred until they are be applied by menu point “apply changes”.

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Managing users and groups

Since WinQuota 2.5.4, the new improvements and significant changes are available to specify users and groups. These changes are relevant to large and even huge domains and Active Directory forests.

Here you can do the following actions:

• Browse your domain structure and find user from the list (as you did in previous versions). For this case you can specify sub-domain name like "SUBDOMAIN", "sub.domain.com", or specify domain controller server exactly, like in the screenshot. In case you type server name, leading backslashes are mandatory.
  
  This way is useful if you don't need to see all users; you have an exact knowledge which domain you are planning to act.
  
  With this feature you are able to specify not primary controller, but backup controller too; in case you have no equal lines to PDC and BDC it may consume less time to see all users and groups you need.
• The 2nd way is based upon exact knowledge of user; so you can type it at the bottom of the dialog like 'ENH\testqa'. No full scan of domain structure will be performed; only the name you typed will be used.
  
  This way is useful if you know exactly all users and groups needed to be accounted, and keeps your time. In case unknown user will be typed, you'll be informed about it and you'll have chances to fix it.
  
  In case you don't need to specify user and group, and you need to set quota limits to all users, you can type here "Anyone"; it is also possible.

Since WinQuota 2.5.4, it is possible to apply the same limits to all group members sequentially, by checking the appropriate checkbox below:

This checkbox is enabled only if you selected a particular group, and this group contains at least one member. By selecting empty groups you'll see the checkbox disabled.

Here you can do the following actions, in case the checkbox enabled:

• Keep the checkbox unchecked. In this case only group based limit will be added, with the semantics that all users in that group cannot overflow hard limit you typed, without any dependency how much space were eaten by each user. This limit will be applicable for all group members in run time; removing user from this group will indicate that this group limit will be affected immediately. By the same manner, in case of adding a new user to this group the appropriate quota limits will be played immediately.
  
  By turning on that option, you'll get the same group limit as the discussed above, plus all members of this group will have that limit separately. Unlike group limits, any changes in group members will not reflect on users that were repeated by that option. Anyway, by removing or adding such user to the group you'll specify later, the limits will not be added or removed automatically. By adding a new member to the group you'll need to add the user limit manually.
  
  As was noted, the group limits also were applied together with all group members; so possibly you'll need to remove group limits or expand all group limits. If you keep group limit intact, all the users will not use space more than that group limit describes simultaneously.

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Editing quota settings

By using menus or just by double click, you can change existing quota limits easily. As the quota limit is pair (directory, credential), you should need to add/remove existing quotas if you want to change credentials. The following dialog to manage limits is being used:

This dialog shows the initial path related to quota checks being modified, user, credentials belong to, and current settings to be applied. The suffixes “K”, “M”, and “G” are applicable to indicates kilo-, mega-, or gigabytes appropriately.

Note: The changes are deferred until they are applied by menu point “apply changes”.

Removing quota settings

To remove existing quota, you need to use the appropriate menu point. Group removals are applicable.

Note: If no elements are selected, no elements will be removed.

Note: This operation will not cause any confirmations!

Note: The changes are deferred until they are applied by menu point “apply changes”.

Applying quota settings

There is a separate menu point to apply all changes you made. No quota limits are updated until it is applied manually. For the operations that may lead your data typed to be lost, confirmations are displayed. For example:

and you'll able to confirm changes or just loose them.

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Checking and repairing quota settings

Since version 2.5, WinQuota Control Panel provides embedded way to check and repair possible problems with quota counters (they may appear if some maintenance was provided in safe mode, for example).

The picture above demonstrates typical view if checks were provided. By options “Repair” and “Display warnings and recommendations” you can not only check (and repair) quota limits, but also see lost credential SIDs, and possible cases to be solved manually like quoted space near to be full.

Note: Before checks you'll note about all unsaved changes.

Note: To keep your time, quota checks are being performed only with settings being displayed. To be sure all disks were checked, provide deep quota limits scanning before.

Analyzing quota settings

One of the most interesting possibilities of WinQuota is not only that you can manage your quota settings silently, but also provided detailed statistics and suggestions for quota limits, by separate menu point “Recommendations”. The parts of information displayed here are also available by color hinting and by repair tool, but “Recommendations” window provides information in central place, with suggestions and errors to be solved.

The typical view is displayed above; at this view you can see:

• Integrity check report. If any warning or error has appeared, you can see it in details with exact names and count states. If any problems were reported, use Check/Repair possibilities to solve it.
  
  
• Space efficiency report. This report indicates all quota limits to be full, near to be full, not used now, and other information. There are suggestions, so you can handle it yourself manually if so. For example, if such limit filled more than 95%, you can increase limits or just inform users to remove unnecessary files.
  
  
• Statistics report. This report provides you various parameters, like space utilization coefficients, limits involved and other.

The report can be copied as source:

and saved separately as HTML files.

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Managing Exclude Lists

Since WinQuota 2.5.7, exclude lists are announced. These lists are used to indicate which files will not be counted in quota limits. It is useful for IIS log files, for example. You can specify files, directories, and simple file masks for exclude lists.

The typical view of exclude files is displayed here:

With appropriate dialog you are able to perform usual operations, like adding new file(s) or folders, change existing records and delete them. By pressing "OK" all exclude files are applied automatically and will be used after every reboot or shutdown without any user interaction.

Another simple dialog provides you intuitive way to specify files; you can type it or find with browse button.

Asterisks and question signs are applicable within file names, and treated as usual. Just simple examples:

• c:\qtest\* indicates all files from folder c:\qtest and its' subfolders that will be affected;
• c:\qtest\*.* indicates all files with extensions from folder c:\qtest and its' subfolders that will be affected;
• c:\qtest\a* indicates all files starting with "a" from folder c:\qtest and its' subfolders that will be affected;
• ?:\qtest\* indicates all files from all disks with folder \qtest and its' subfolders that will be affected;
• c:\*.bmp indicates all BMP files from drive c on all folders that will be affected;

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Specific cases

Generally, WinQuota works with all file activities, without any separation by specific operations. But in such cases, you need to handle quota limits in special manner. Mostly these issues are related to backup tools, such disk compressors, and more. Here we can see two cases:

• Such programs must refer to all quota limits, without dependency of its' other settings
• Such programs must not be accounted.

The simplest case for first tool is such archiving script, that moves old files to other locations, tapes or other storages. As it moves files out of the user' folders, it need to update quotas according to (re)moved files.

The same case is applicable for any programs that removes or moves such user files from non-user accounts, like nightly anti-viral checks (with file movement to quarantine), various services that works with its' own accounts but not user accounts, and more.

To solve this case, WinQuota introduces administrative accounts. With help of this feature, you can

• Define such specific user for maintenance tasks
• Assign this user for services you need to use
• Specify this account as administrative
• And as result, all file operations from this account will be impersonated to current quota limit credentials.

For 2nd case, the simplest illustratiuon is xcopy tool. As it copies whole files, it also copies quota limits as well as file contents. But as these limits are copied to new place, it become to play immediately through WinQuota; and if such limit will have not enough room to copy files, xcopy tool will fail. And the side effect might be quota limits are calculated twice.

The same cases can be applicable for other backup and restore tools. To remove this side effect, WinQuota provides backup tools settings to specify program exceptions. All these programs listed as backup tool, will not be accounted.

Administrative accounts

Since WinQuota 3.0.8, administrative accounts are announced. Sometimes you like to use such kind of archiving software, like DiskXtender File System Manager by EMC, or similar. But as these applications work as service, it cannot use proper user credentials to move/delete files. As result, user specific quota counters will not be updated (it seems there is common problem for any real-time user-sensitive quotas). Fortunately WinQuota provides solution for it: administrative accounts.

Technically, all these accounts are part of all quota limits. It means if your tool runs with specific account like IUSR_Foo, you can inform WinQuota to keep in mind this account acts in all quota limits; and all user quotas will be recalculated properly, if this tool archive user files for example, or move it to other storage, etc, and all quota limit counters will be decreased. And any operation like restoring such content from archive storage, will increase user quota limits back.

This way have only one limitation: if such tool will use temporary files inside user quotas, it may fail if not enough space will be available for these files, so do not forhet to use temporary folders for that tools out of folders with quotas.

Managing administrative accounts

WinQuota Control Panel provides simple way to manage these accounts; you just need to enumerate it into form available from menu File->Administrative accounts. There is simple list with ability to add new account and remove it by appropriate buttons:

You can use the same way to choose accounts as you doing for quota limits, but with exception: meta-user "Anyone" is not accessible and cannot be used here.

Note: we recommend to use exact user names in all cases as it possible to decrease possible violations with further group members manipulations. In fact you've using limited amount of services that might need this feature to be activated.

Note: do not use account "System" (and "LocalSystem", "Network Service") for this purpose; a lot of system services acts with these credentials. Please use specific (user-defined) accounts for services need act with user files.

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Bypassing quota accounting

WinQuota Control Panel provides simple way to bypass qupota accounting for specific applications (since 3.0.10). It might be necessary for backup/restore tools, specific scripts, and more. It is available from menu File->Backup tools, as described below:

Here you can add, edit or delete backup tools. All backup tools are specified by its' short process names, without path. Wildcards are available.

You can type exact process name, find it on disk, or just select from running processes, as follows:

WinQuota Web Console and command line tool also have the same possibilities.

Registering your copy of WinQuota

WinQuota provides ways to register trial version of WinQuota. If you want purchase WinQuota, start here. As purchase process will be completed, you'll receive your individual registration information. This information can be used with registration tool or with installation wizards. The current state of registration and evaluation can be seen at about dialog.

Operating with Windows NT Explorer Shell Extensions

Shell extensions are the main and efficient way to manage quota limits; but there is no possibility to display analytics. To see statistics, suggestions, and for maintenance of quota settings use WinQuota Control Panel and Command line tools.

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Choosing directory

So Windows Explorer is used with extensions to standard Properties dialog, as the following picture demonstrates:

Managing Quota Settings

The “Managing quota settings” form contains the following controls (see the image below):

• Checkbox “Enable quota management”. It indicates if quota checks will be used automatically.
• Checkbox “Deny disk space to users exceeded quota limit”. This checkbox indicates if all writing requests that exceed quota settings will be declined.
• 3 buttons on the right of the form allow add, remove or change quota settings record.
• List with quota settings currently applicable for specified directory.

Additionally, actions being executed over push-buttons introduced above allow showing several slave dialogs. There are credentials choosing dialog and quota entity editing dialog.

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Adding new Quota Entity

Credential choosing dialog allows enumerating of all users in the system, including local users and groups, domain users and groups (in case computer is involved into corporal network). WinQuota works with domain structure from NT4WS to WinXP, including Active Directory support. This dialog supports asynchronous data retrieval mechanisms, and hierarchical representation of users, domains and groups as shown below:

Changing Existing Quota Entity Values

Quota settings dialog provides basic facilities to change quota settings:

This dialog shows the initial path related to quota checks being modified, user, credentials belong to, and current settings already applied. You can apply the suffixes (K - kilobytes, M - megabytes, G - gigabytes) to specify limits.

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Managing notifications

Since WinQuota 2.0, the new mechanism is available to receive notifications in case soft quota limits exceeded. WinQuota provides UI to manage notifications, including 'any user defined' notification programs.

At the time a soft quota limit is exceeded WinQuota launches all specified notification scripts (it can be any programs or scripts being supported by Windows Scripting Host), and passes detailed information about user, directory, quota limits and excess values.

WinQuota provides ability to manage notifications as it is displayed in the following picture:

Here you are able to manage all notifications that were registered for WinQuota. To see explanation of the parameters being assumed by your program, please take a look to the following table:

Parameter	Description
%1	directory with soft limit exceeded
%2	user reaches soft limit
%3	occupied size

In 3.0.11 or later, you can manage notifications more precise by adding launch conditions.

In new versions, for every notification separately, you can specify:

• From which user your script should be launched (impersonate to);
• Limit how much identical notifications need to be started;
• Do not launch notification unless soft quota limit exceeded by specific user;
• Do not launch all notifications but only if sequence of identical notifications exceeds such limit.

Adding new notification

To add new notifications just type the script you need to be executed, or use "Browse" button to select it.

In version 3.0.11 or later you can specify additional parameters:

WinQuota provides a couple of useful scripts as examples; all of them are described separately. There are scripts to send email notifications, send SMS/pager messages, and other.

Additional parameters treat as follows:

1. Limit for specific user

   In fact, all notification scripts are being running for all quotas in case one of soft limit quotas were exceeded. As result, you need to make such post-processing conditions in your script if you don't want to run notification in such case. The most often case you need to run specific notification only if particular user(s) exceeds limits only. To make it easier, WinQuota announces the following options:

   • Anyone (default option). It means no user separation will do.
   • Only user specified in quota limit. This option works in conjunction with specific user were assigned to particular quota. So if you have such quotas for 'John' and 'Mary', and want to run such notification to him/her, and only if John or Mary exceeds soft limit but not anybody else, there is your choice. Groups are not allowed here, only users.
   • All users except specified in quota limit. This option works in the same manner as "Only yser were specified in limit", but runs notification if limit exceeded by anybody except John/Mary. Grou[ps are not allowed here, only users.
   • Specific user. Here you able to specify specific user. The notification will run only if this user exceed soft limit, but not in all other cases.

2. Impersonate to

   With these options (user name and password) you can specify separate account to run this notification. If no impersonation account specified, the IUSR_WQUOTA user with restricted rights will be used. Note: IUSR_WQUOTA is not belongs to power users group, so you may need to enable notification script into local/domain policies for IUSQ_WQUOTA user too.

3. Ignore increments less than

   This option reduces amount of notifications; it does not report every notification but collects all identical notifications until specified limit collected. So if you'll specify such limit (for example 1 000 000 bytes), and user will copy many small files over soft quota limit, you'll see not many notifications but only notification every new 1 000 000 bytes exceeded. Zero means this option is not played.

4. Limit amount of notifications for onel imit to

   This option provides maximum one notification per second, 1 minute, 5 minutes, 1 hour, 1 day or 1 week respectively for this notification. It is useful for case you need to know such soft limit is exceeded but you don't need to manage it soon, or you need to inform user about it and leave him time to reduce occupied space.

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Operating with WinQuota Web Console

Since version 3.0, WinQuota provides Web-based interface to manage quota limits, notifications and exclude lists. In contrast to other ways, the Web Console has not all the variety of features available in WinQuota Control Panel, but it provides all basic functionality to manage WinQuota with browser.

WinQuota Web Console uses NTLM authentication to be sure that only administrators with the appropriate rights can operate with WinQuota. While your permissions are not enough, you'll be able to see WinQuota settings but all attempts to change anything will be dropped silently without any notifications.

The typical view of WinQuota Web Console is:

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Configuring WinQuota Web Console

If IIS 5.x or 6.x were installed earlier than WinQuota, the WinQuota Web Console should be installed and configured automatically during setup. The default access link is http://your host/winquota/.

But in case you need to (re)configure WinQuota Web Console later, WinQuota provides script named "install4iis.js". You should follow to folder where WinQuota installed, follow to sub-folder named 'webconsole', and launch script there. It will create virtual folder /winquota/ at your Default Web Site, with all required access rights.

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Adding new quota limit

As in other cases, you need to specify root folder to be limited with quotas. Unlike the other ways, you should type the appropriate folder manually and with no possibility to see folder structure on remote computer due to security reasons.

As the folder is chosen, you need to specify credentials to be played. Credential choosing dialog allows enumerating of all users and groups in the system, including local users and groups, domain users and groups (in case computer is involved into corporal network). WinQuota Web Console works like WinQuota Pro, without ability to specify search queries, and you need to see whole users' list and select user name from this list (or type user name exactly).

And the final step is specifying values for hard and soft limits. Unlike the other versions, you need to type all values in kilobytes only.

Another difference is that WinQuota Web Console has no deferred appliance of your settings, and all your changes will be applied immediately.

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Editing quota settings

By using navigation links, you can change existing quota limits easily. As the quota limit is pair (directory, credential), you need to add/remove existing quotas if you want to change credentials.

You can see the initial path related to quota checks being modified, user, credentials belong to, and current settings to be applied. You can change soft and hard quota limits; other values are informational and cannot be changed. Unlike other tools, you need to specify size in kilobytes only.

Note: All changes will be applied immediately.

Removing quota settings

To remove existing quota, you need to use the appropriate navigation link. Group removals are applicable only for additional link named "delete all" and means that all quota the limits for a specific folder will be removed. To remove only a part of the limits you should use "delete" link step by step and confirm questions each time.

Note: The changes are applied immediately.

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Managing Exclude Lists

The exclude lists are used to indicate which files will not be counted in quota limits. It is useful for IIS log files, for example. You can specify files, directories, and simple file masks for exclude lists.

With the appropriate UI you are able to perform usual operations, like adding new file(s) or folders, change existing records and delete them. All exclude paths are applied immediately and will be used after every reboot or shutdown without any user interaction.

WinQuota Web Console provides you the same way to specify paths as for quota limits; and folder structure is not available.

Asterisks and question signs are applicable within file names, and treated as usual. Just simple examples:

• c:\qtest\* indicates all files from folder c:\qtest and its' subfolders that will be affected;
• c:\qtest\*.* indicates all files with extensions from folder c:\qtest and its' subfolders that will be affected;
• c:\qtest\a* indicates all files starts with "a" from folder c:\qtest and its' subfolders that will be affected;
• ?:\qtest\* indicates all files from all disks with folder \qtest and its' subfolders that will be affected;
• c:\*.bmp indicates all BMP files from drive c in all folders that will be affected;

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Managing notifications

The notifications are available in WinQuota Web Console, with common Web Console security limitation: no way available to browse folder structure at all. In fact you need to type exact script names in simple text boxes. Any kind of notifications can be managed.

WinQuota Web Console has no ways to display notification information remotely, but you can use standard way to see event log for all notification traps.

With WinQuota Web Console you can manage all notifications that were registered for WinQuota. To see explanation of the parameters being assumed by your program, please, take a look at the following table:

Parameter	Description
%1	directory with soft limit exceeded
%2	user reaches soft limit
%3	occupied size

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Adding, changing and removing notification

To add new notifications just type the script you need to be executed.

WinQuota provides a couple of useful scripts as examples; all of them are described separately. There are scripts for sending email notifications, sending SMS/pager messages, and other.

With the same manner notifications can be modified. To do this, please, follow link "edit" at the right side of the appropriate notification.

To remove a notification, you need to follow "delete" link and confirm alert message as for any other subject deletion with WinQuota Web Console. Also you can use link "delete all" to remove all notifications at once.

All changes will be applied immediately.

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Managing administrative accounts

WinQuota web Console provides simple way to manage administrative accounts; you just need to enumerate it into form available from menu "Administrative accounts" from navigation bar. There is simple list with ability to add new account and remove it by appropriate buttons.

You can use the same way to choose accounts as you doing for quota limits, but with exception: meta-user "Anyone" is not accessible and cannot be used here.

Note: we recommend to use exact user names in all cases as it possible to decrease possible violations with further group members manipulations. In fact you've using limited amount of services that might need this feature to be activated.

Note: do not use account "System" (and "LocalSystem", "Network Service") for this purpose; a lot of system services acts with these credentials. Please use specific (user-defined) accounts for services need act with user files.

WinQuota and SNMP

Since version 3.0, WinQuota has support of SNMP monitoring. With usual SNMP tools you are able to see WinQuota settings, and manage WinQuota soft limit overflows. The appropriate MIB file is available as a part of WinQuota installation.

Note: WinQuota SNMP support provides all data read only, and you need other ways to change WinQuota limits (like WinQuota Control Panel or WinQuota Web Console).

WinQuota SNMP Agent works as extension for standard Microsoft SNMP Agent, so you need to install and configure MS SNMP support first.

WinQuota SNMP support does not provide SNMP traps as embedded service; we provide other way to send traps as a part of generic notifications. With free tool from Network Computing Technologies, Inc. named TrapGen, you can send notifications as SNMP traps you need with high customization level. The TrapGen tool is incorporated into installation.

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