Directory quotas inside a dataset with NFS export for /home sharing

[viniciusferrao]

Hello guys,

The problem subject is a little confusing, so the major picture is:

I started using my FreeNAS box to serve NFS for serving the /home directory of our users. But I would like to limit each user so they don't fill up the storage and compromises the environment and at the same time I don't want a single user filling the entire datasat for the /home share.

I've already created a dataset with 1TB of default quota (not the "children option") and mounted it as /home over NFS on 4 servers, so each user has it's own directory on those servers with it's own uid and gid mapping, but this mapping is incompatible with FreeNAS, since the users don't exist on FreeNAS and putting the storage box on the domain (AD) generates different uid and gid mappings exclusively on FreeNAS, this can be explained since I'm using SSSD on the servers and FreeNAS uses a different authentication schema to Active Directory.

With that in mind I just want to deploy a fixed quota per directory inside the dataset. Something like 512MB is fine, I don't care about different quotas for different users or groups (it would be cool to have, but with those limitations I'm satisfied with a single quota for each directory).

I've came across some ZFS options, but they only applies to datasets and not to directories, and I don't know if having a dataset for each of our users is viable, since we've 1000+ users.

Thanks in advance,
Vinícius.

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

I don't know if having a dataset for each of our users is viable

Are you concerned about the management overhead or about reaching some kind of limit in ZFS. If the former, it seems that overhead will be present whether you're dealing with directories or datasets. If the latter, don't worry about it.

Do keep in mind that NFS shares don't extend to child datasets.