Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What is WinQuota?
A: WinQuota is a fast and reliable solution to provide per-directory quota management, including user notifications, hard and soft limits, and fully automated process of quota management.

Q: Why I need to use WinQuota?
A: Please, take a look why it rather should be used and what advantages it provides.

Q: What WinQuota means by "real-time"?
A: It means that all WinQuota limits work in real time, without any periodical scans or something like that. WinQuota handles (and declines if necessary) all file operations before they are taken to file system.

Q: What are the WinQuota requirements?
A: Pentium capable processor (AMD64, Itanium), 128MB RAM, 15MB free disk space, see requirements and features for details.

Q: Can I install WinQuota to my personal notebook?
A: Yes, but quota settings will be applied only for your computer directories and files. Please take a look at possible ways to using WinQuota.

Q: Can WinQuota work without continuous administrator assistance?
A: Yes, WinQuota has been designed to make your administrator free of manual quota settings tracking; WinQuota is able to work fully automatically.

Q: What is the difference between soft and hard quota limits?
A: The hard limits cannot be exceeded at all; soft limits may be exceeded but WinQuota will warn your system administrator.

Q: Can I use custom notifications?
A: Yes, and without limitations.

Q: Does the notification work in sandbox?
A: Yes, every program works with credentials of standard user with minimal rights. You are able to escalate rights for a user at your own risk.

Q: Does WinQuota have a possibility to notify me on my handy/pager of quota limits excess?
A: Yes; please read the notification questions section for details.

Q: Does WinQuota have programming level API?
A: Yes. It is available for any COM suitable program starting with C++ and ending with any WSH capable script. Please, read the appropriate documentation.

Q: I have Opteron, Athlon 64 or Intel Xeon with EM64T enabled. Which version of WinQuota should I use?
A: WinQuota AMD64 edition, if you've using 64 bit Windows. Use x86 version for all other cases.

Q: How to setup quota limits precisely?
A: Please, take a look at our examples.

Q: How to send you a bug report?
A: Please, take a look here.

Q: Are there any compatibility problems for WinQuota?
A: WinQuota has no compatibility problems now. But we would appreciate any information concerning the problems you encountered.

Q: Does WinQuota have corporate licenses?
A: Yes. But for this case private requests by email are necessary.

Q: Are there any discounts for WinQuota possible?
A: Yes. All discount opportunities are reviewed separately for every particular case. You can also request about a discount or send out your proposal by email.

Q: Do I need to buy 4 licenses if I have 2xXeon HT processors on my server?
A: No, WinQuota doesn't require per-processor payment. One license will be enough.

Q: How many licenses do I need to buy for a cluster?
A: One license for each cluster node.

Q: How to get a WinQuota license free?
A: Generally we do not propose free licenses; but we provide various actions from time to time. Please, refer to our news.

Q: We are a non-profit organization. Is there a way to get WinQuota license for free?
A: Please, contact us via email and we'll discuss special conditions for you.

Q: How to buy WinQuota?
A: Please, contact us via email and we'll provide you all the required information.

Q: Do you have volume discounts?
A: Yes.

Q: Does WinQuota support Windows 2003 Advanced server and/or Windows 2003 Datacenter?
A: Yes, WinQuota supports them both.

Q: Does WinQuota support Windows 2008 Enterprise and/or Windows 2008 Datacenter?
A: Yes, WinQuota supports them both.

Q: Does WinQuota also work well within a Windows Server 2003/2008 cluster environment?
A: Yes it works. Physically WinQuota works at the intermediate level behind all software like MS Exchange and IIS, so all WinQuota limitations are applicable to any kind of software you're using in cluster.

Q: Is there a special way of installing it onto a clustered system?
A: No; you just need to install WinQuota to every cluster node as usual, and use central storage to manage your files and limitations.

Q: Are there any other things to be aware of when using WinQuota on a clustered system?
A: For the case of central storage (CAS/SAS/NAS/etc) you are able to maintain quota settings from any active cluster node; all other nodes will acquire your changes on the fly.

Q: Is this product applicable for a big company with TBs of data?
A: Yes. WinQuota works with 64bit file sizes, so the maximum quota limitations sizes are terabytes.

Q: Can I use WinQuota with AMD64/EM64T platform?
A: Yes. Currently AMD64/EM64T version is available for trial download.

Q: Can I use WinQuota with Itanium platform?
A: Yes. Currently Itanium version is available for trial download.

Q: How to install WinQuota?
A: Please, refer to our installation howto.

Q: Does WinQuota provide Web-based installation?
A: No.

Q: Does WinQuota provide remote installation?
A: No.

Q: Does WinQuota provide silent installation?
A: Yes, but not in downloadable version.

Q: I tried to install WinQuota but, it seems, I haven't administrative rights to install. What's wrong?
A: The first possible reason - you really haven't permissions (you are not a local administrator at the computer you try to install WinQuota to). Another possible reason for the problem is that your architecture not Win32 compliant (you're using AMD64 architecture). Please, use suitable version for your architecture.

Q: Does WinQuota support any kind of notifications internally?
A: Internally it supports event logs only. All other notifications are external and can be configured as you wish. Using, for example, Google, you can get either commercial or non-commercial components for any suitable kind of notification.

Q: Why WinQuota has external notifications?
A: For the most common cases you either have already installed such components like AspEmail, or just have plans to do it; and WinQuota uses the component you have already installed. We decided to support compatibility with dozen of other email/SMS/whatever notifications software in our product because free tools have enough capabilities and provide lower cost for the whole solution.

Q: Does WinQuota support email notifications?
A: Yes. You can use any of predefined scripts, or write your own version yourself.

Q: Do I need a 3rd party email sender component?
A: In general, yes. Please, take a look into our email notification scripts overview.

Q: Does WinQuota support pager/SMS notifications?
A: Yes. You can use any of the preinstalled scripts, or write your own version yourself.

Q: Do I need a 3rd party SMS/pager component?
A: In general, yes. Please, take a look into our pager/SMS notification scripts overview.

Q: The Control Panel and the Web Console displayed different information. When I add new limits via Control Panel, it will not get reflected on the web console accordingly even if I refresh the screen.
A: WinQuota Control Panel does not apply quota limits until you've stored it by Ctrl+S (File->Apply quota limits menu). So WinQuota WebConsole still display only applied limits.

Q: It seems to me the Web Console has no security, as I have no login page.
A: WinQuota Web Console requires NTLM authentication, and administrative rights to work (WinQuota Web Console just uses Windows Single-Sign-On mechanism to not disturb you with additional login screen unless it necessary).

Q: Are there anyway to capture the LIMITS information onto an external file like excel CSV?
A: Yes, you can use WinQuota command line or WinQuota sample scripts to collect all information about limits. For example, the following script (I just named it as get-quota-limits-in-csv.vbs) will provide you information in CSV form:

    dim api, item, path
    dim i, j, k, count, qcount
    
    set api = CreateObject("WinQuota.API.2")

' Writing CSV header to standard output
    WScript.Echo 'Quota path; Hard limit in Kbytes; Occupied in Kbytes; User/Group name'

' Enumerating all folders were used to specify quota settings 
    count = api.getPrecachedPathSize()
' For each path we discovered we looking for quota settings
    for i = 0 to count - 1
        path = api.getPrecachedPathItem(i)
' For each path with settings we discovering all settings step by step
        qcount = api.getQuotaListSize(path)
        for j = 0 to qcount - 1
            set item = api.getQuotaListItem (path, j)
            ' Important issue: all counters are seeing in kilobytes
            WScript.Echo path & ";" & item.hardLimit & "K;" & item.occupied & "K;" & item.account
        next
    next
' Marking all resources to be unused
    set api  = Nothing
    set item = Nothing
    

    cscript get-quota-limits-in-csv.vbs > report.csv
    

Q: Sometimes I can see the data acquired more than 100%. Why?
A: There is indication how much data were requested by last rejected file operation. For example, you have rest of limit 100K, but trying to copy 10M file at this limit with an intellectual program like FAR manager. The initial request contains 10M, and it is indicated as limit overburn. But physically no data can be written over than 100K, so you may be confused looking operations in progress. As user will counteract with the copying program, file will be deleted and limits will be actual.

Q: But why you did not rejected request with 10M file, if you have 100K free space?
A: Working with multi-user and multi-process environment we cannot lock disk space until actual writes will be achieved; for example your program works with logs, and it consumes many time. While this program works, other programs can free additional disk space. So we indicate request size only as current write operation blocked.

Q: Do I need any specific way to bacup quota limits?
A: All WinQuota limits are being collected together with folders; and you don't need to make separate backup copies for quota limits. Every backup program which recognizes named streams, like standard NTBackup or even xcopy, will backup your limits too.

Q: I've created a notification script and it works well when I start it manually; but it fails as I specify it to WinQuota. What I did wrong?
A: In practice, you are starting script with more privileges than WinQuota uses. So you can do the following to add more privileges:

• - Add required rights to IUSR_WQUOTA user

• - Disable IUSR_WQUOTA user completely
• - With Windows Control Panel, specify account which has necessary privileges for WinQuota Service.

Q: I've created notification script and it works well when I start it manually; but it fails or produces incorrect results when I specify it to WinQuota. What I did wrong?
A: The possible problem is that your script uses settings of your account (registry, files, etc). So you need to specify your account to run with WinQuota Service, to share your registry and file settings:

• - Disable IUSR_WQUOTA user completely
• - With Windows Control Panel, specify account which has necessary privileges for WinQuota Service.

Q: But why WinQuota user named IUSR_WQUOTA has minimal privileges?
A: Just for security reasons.

Q: How to limit WinQuota usage for limited list of users?
A: WinQuota Control Panel and Windows NT shell extensions requires administrative rights to run. Just verify the all required users (and only these) that already have administrative rights.

Q: Does WinQuota API have the same requirements for administrative rights?
A: No, command line tools and WinQuota COM API work without administrative rights. These abilities were designed for integration into your infrastructure, so you need provide correct access rights to scripts and programs based upon WinQuota API and command line tools yourself.

Q: I have a problem X with WinQuota. What I need to do?
A: Please contact us with this problem.