That stuff is pretty basic and can hardly be used for notifying end users.
We are currently writing our own system, like others have already done (and mentioned, here or in the Google list).
The key limitations we found (6.5.5.x):
– Only the /ifs path is reported; end users would like to read the share name or the NFS mount point.
– Assume we you would like to generate an advisory message at 90% of the quota limit,
you can insert the current usage and the advisory threshold, but not the final hard quota limit.
So it is not possible to produce this clear message: “now reached 90% of 10TB, available: 1TB”
Other observations:
– Often regular reports on storage consumption by a group of users needs to be created for dept. leaders etc.
This is more than a quota notification system could provide, so it has to be implemented anyway and then
could also provide the more simple notifications.
– Assigning shares per user and setting *directory* quotas (container flag!) on these shares provides to end users
a very simply way to query consumption and limits at any time directly on
the mounted shares. That reduces the need for elaborate notifications down to
simple emergency notifications (as available through the built-in template message system).
On the other hand, standard user quotas can’t be queried by clients on Isilon (at least not with NFS).
If you have more specific questions about the built-in template message system, just feel free to ask.
Peter