Quota and system limit terminology

Quotas and system limits restrict your use of Google Cloud resources to support resource availability for all Google Cloud users. Quotas have default values, and can typically be adjusted. System limits are fixed values that cannot be changed.

The following table lists additional quota terminology and definitions.

Term

Description

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

Usually, quota refers to a Google Cloud resource and its unit of measurement. For example, the quota CPUS-PER-VM-FAMILY-per-project-region defines the number of Compute Engine virtual CPUs (vCPUs) available to your project for a specific VM family in a particular region. Occasionally, Google Cloud documentation uses the word quota in its more general sense, meaning a limited allowance.

Quota adjustment

A request to increase or decrease a quota value. Quota adjustment requests are subject to review by Google Cloud.

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 quota preferences for a particular dimension combination. You can use this resource to make quota adjustments requests and specify behavior for adjustment requests. You can set quota preferences by using the Google Cloud console, the Cloud Quotas API, or the Google Cloud CLI.

    Quota value

    The maximum for a given quota. This value can be adjusted for most quotas.

    System limit

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