How to set size quota for folder in some network storage?

Question

Server has multiple users, every user has its own folder and can upload files.

How to prevent abuse and set a size limit for the user folder? It should allow disk space optimization - users should be able to share unused space.

What network file storage systems can provide such option? Ability to mount as a standart unix file system is important, I can't use Riak for example.

Operating system can be any POSIX - compatible, I use Ubuntu-server because it's easy to set up, but any other also will be fine.

P.S.

Also (but it's optional and not a hard requirement) it would be nice to have such property. If data get lost - it should get lost completely but in one place (whole user folders should get lost but for small amount of users), than small piece but in many-many places (one or two files but in many-many user folders).

It is possible to set such quota on the application-level by checking size before storing file, but I can't use it because in my case file upload done not directly by application but via some third-party module I don't control.

Answer 1

In my experience, I have not found anything to arbitrarily control a given directory. The larger NFS network appliances, such as Netapp and Isilon, provide a way to control quotas at basically a top level directory situation. Where I work, we use a number of project directories and can control the total quota for the directory and a specific user quota under this directory. It seems to work fine.