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Logical sizes, Physical Sizes, Transaction Logs and Quotas

Firstly, Happy New Year!

Here’s a scenario we see commonly enough~:

A customer enforces mail quotas. The customer also uses DAOS.

And the question arises which type of quota enforcement (within their transaction log settings) should they be using?

Well good question.

Firstly one would likely check the help here.

One would also note that (generally) it is recommended to use “Check space used in file when adding a note”, as it doesn’t require administrative intervention to reduce the size with a compact. This means that quotas will apply to logical sizes of mailfiles.

But what if the customer wants their quotas to apply to the physical size rather than the logical size (i.e. set Check File Size when extending the File”)?

This is possible, however I don’t think how it applies is particularly intuitive.

It should be noted that this applies to the “Disk Space” size within the Application/Database properties and not the “Physical Size” as it appear within the Admin Client.

A screenshot below helps demonstrate what we mean here.

In the red box is the logical size

In the blue box is the physical size minus DAOS.

In the green box is the physical size with DAOS included. This is the one quotas apply to when “Check File Size when extending the File” is set.

I hope you found this useful!

Cormac McCarthy – Domino People Ltd

5 thoughts on “Logical sizes, Physical Sizes, Transaction Logs and Quotas

  • Lars Berntrop-Bos says:

    Your example db has a very high used %. The setting “Check File Size when extending the File” includes the unused space, so fif your example db would have 50% unused it’s size in the dialog would be 574 MB and te quota restriction would apply even sooner. You are right that this is confusing. You state that applying the setting to the physical size is possible, but I cannot finfd that in your article. Could you please state how that is possible?

    • Cormac McCarthy says:

      Hi Lars,

      The point is the “physical size” the help talks about is not the “physical size” as displayed in the admin client (blue box in screenshot). It only applies to the “physical size” in the application/database properties(green box).

      Which again, I don’t think is intuitive.

      Thanks,
      Cormac

  • Carsten Haedicke says:

    The reason the “physical size” the help talks about differs from “physical size” displayed in admin client (blue box in screenshot) and the \”size\” displayed in property box is that help text was written after transaction logging was introduced in R5 but years before DAOS and NIFNSF.

    For the client the size is transparent because almost all handling is done by the server. The property box in fact shows the logical size (in MB – admin client shows it in bytes) and doesn\’t show any text like \”logical\” or \”physical\” for a reason. So from todays point of view the help text just needs some revision.

    And we have to revise the formula for \”logical size\” to:

    Logical size = physical size on disc [+ DAOS size] [+NIFNSF size]

    As the quota indicator (little bar chart top left above nav pane in users mail database) shows the actual logical db size in relation to it\’s [also logical] quota and users can actually see changes immediately if they delete or create mails the only setting making sense (is intuitive for users) is “Check space used in file when adding a note” as long as one is using transaction logging, DAOS and/or NIFNSF.

    Fact: the recommendation makes even more sense since DAOS and NIFNSF have been introduced.

    Carsten

    • Cormac McCarthy says:

      Hi Carsten,

      Great to have your feedback and thanks for your response.

      I suppose the clear point here, the help could do with an update.

      The columns in display in the admin client could too.

      Cormac

  • Carsten Haedicke says:

    Summary:
    Property box could use the wording database size or just size instead of disk size.
    Existing columns in admin client are fine but addtl columns for NIFNSF like DAOS would make sense to let you calc the logical size = physical size on disc [+ DAOS size] [+NIFNSF size].
    And of course help needs some (more) updates or even better a wiki replacement.

    Carsten

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