Quota and system limit terminology

Cloud Quotas provides tools so you can view your usage of cloud resources, create usage alerts, and even automate quota adjustments.

  • Quotas specify the amount of a countable, shared resource that you can use, and they are defined by Google Cloud services such as Compute Engine.

  • System limits are fixed values that cannot be changed.

The following table lists additional quota terminology and definitions.

Term

Description

Adjustable

A resource that can have its quota value adjusted up or down.

Countable

A resource that can be tracked, and thus counted towards the value allocated by the quota system.

Dimension

A dimension is an attribute that represents a region or a zone, or a service-specific dimension, such as gpu_family or network_id.

The Cloud Quotas API represents dimensions as key-value pairs, where the key is the dimension name, and the value is the value of the named dimension—for example, {"key" : "region", "value" : "us-central1"}.

Quota

The amount of a countable, shared resource that you can use.

Quota adjustment

A request to increase or decrease a quota value. Quota increase adjustments are subject to approval and fulfillment. Quota decrease adjustments are immediately approved.

Quota adjuster settings (Preview)

This resource represents your quota adjuster settings for a particular project. When enabled, the quota adjuster monitors your usage for the specified resources and issues quota adjustment requests when resource usage approaches its quota value.

Quota info

QuotaInfo is a read-only resource that provides metadata and quota value information about a particular quota for a given project, folder or organization. The QuotaInfo resource contains:

  • Metadata such as name and dimension.
  • Quota values for different quota dimensions.

    • Cloud Quotas obtains information from the quotas defined by Google Cloud services and any fulfilled quota adjustments that you initiate.

    Note: Because QuotaInfo is constructed by incorporating information from different sources, a default quota configuration exists even if you have not created a QuotaPreference resource. Until you express a preferred state through quotaPreference.create or quotaPreference.update, QuotaInfo relies on the default quota information available to determine what quota value to enforce.

    Quota preference

    A QuotaPreference resource represents your preference for a particular dimension combination. Use this resource to make quota increase adjustments to quotas in your projects and to make quota decrease adjustments to quotas in your projects, folders or organizations. Quota increase adjustments are subject to approval and fulfillment. Quota decreases are fulfilled immediately. Use the Cloud Quotas console UI or API to set a quota preference.

    System limit

    A fixed value; typically, an architectural constraint. System limits cannot be adjusted.

    However, some system limits are countable, and in such cases, Cloud Quotas provides tools so that you can monitor your usage against these values and create alerts.

    Type

    A field that denotes a resource as a quota (adjustable) or system limit (not adjustable). Some quotas might also be non-adjustable.

    Value

    The current effective maximum that has been applied to a countable resource or system limit. Quotas are typically adjustable, and you are able to modify the value of a quota through manual or automated quota adjustments.