20.8.2 Quota Theory of Operations

Customized user and domain quotas are specified by adding quota attributes to LDAP user and domain entries. Quota defaults, notification policy, enforcement, and grace period are specified in configutil parameters or by using the imquotacheck utility.

To determine if a user is over quota, Messaging Server first checks to see if a quota has been set for the individual user. If no quota has been set, Messaging Server looks at the default quota set for all users. For a user, the quota is for all the cumulative bytes or messages in all of the user's folders. For a domain, the quota is for all the cumulative bytes or messages of all the users in a particular domain. For a message type, the quota is for all the cumulative bytes or messages for that message type. For a folder, the quota is for all the cumulative bytes or messages for user's folder.

You can specify the following quota values for a user's mailbox tree:

• Quota values for specific folders in the user's mailbox.

• Quota values for specific message types such as voice mail or text messages. (A message type quota applies to messages of that type in all folders in the user's mailbox.)

• A default quota value that applies to all folders and message types in the user's mailbox that are not explicitly assigned quotas.

The following guidelines apply when you assign multiple quota values for a user:

• Quotas do not overlap. For example, when there is a quota for a particular message type or folder, messages of that type or messages in that folder are not counted toward the default quota. Each message counts toward one and only one quota.

• The total quota for the whole user mailbox equals the sum of the values of all the quotas specified by default, type, and folder.

• Message type quotas take precedence over folder quotas. For example, suppose one quota is specified for a user's memos folder and another quota is specified for voice messages. Now suppose the user stores eight voice messages in the memos folder. The eight messages are counted toward the voice mail quota and excluded from the memos folder quota.

Changes made to the quota attributes and configutil parameters will take effect automatically, but not immediately as information is stored in caches and it may take a little time before the changes fully take effect. Messaging Server provides a command, iminitquota in Sun Java System Messaging Server 6.3 Administration Reference that updates the changed immediately.

The imquotacheck utility allows you to check message store usage against assigned quotas.