[bitfolk] What to do when a customer's backups go above 100%

Hi, I'd like to revisit a topic that has never really been resolved - what to do when someone goes past the limit of their backup space. When I say backups I'm talking about the backups service as described here: https://bitfolk.com/customer_information.html#toc_2_Local_backups It's by no means an awesome service - I recognise that everyone has their own preferred methods of doing backups and there's no way to please everyone - but it is taken advantage of by 38 people at present. The way it works currently with regard to disk usage is: - A backup job runs - Disk usage is calculated and the usage is recorded in a database - Nagios sends warnings when that usage goes above 95%, sends critical alerts if it goes above 100% - Backups keep on running anyway - Both I and the customer see those Nagios alerts So, let's say someone goes above 100% usage. Here's what I tend to do: - Leave it for a bit to see if the usage starts going down. If it does then it will probably go below 100% again as the customer fixed whatever got backed up that shouldn't - If it keeps going upwards or is so far beyond 100% that it would take ages to drop, then I open a ticket with the customer asking them what they want to do. - Most of the time I get no reply, so assuming the overage is only small I wait a week or two before asking them to respond. - Eventually I do get a response and it will usually be a request for one of two things: a. Buy more disk space for backups, or b. Go into the backups and delete every instance of some directory that should never have been backed up I really, really dislike doing (b) because I don't want to mess about in customer files, I might make a mistake, I might see things I don't want to see, etc. But I will do it if the customer insists. As you can probably see, all of this is quite a hassle to resolve. Basically I don't want to be sending emails and deleting files by hand. I can think of a couple of ways to reduce the hassle, and I was wondering if any of you who currently take advantage of the backups have any thoughts on this: 1. I could stop providing the local backups service. 38 people isn't a huge amount, and it probably won't be a big hardship to find other backup strategies. Most other solutions are quite complex and in these days of "unlimited backup space" that many services offer, maybe I should just not bother? 2. When the customer goes over 100% I could automatically add disk space to cover the usage, and invoice them. 2a. Like (2) but just leave it a couple of weeks before doing that, to give them chance to fix it first. 3. Something else? What are your thoughts on (2)? Or any further suggestions? Would you need any modification to the alerting settings before this would be acceptable? Note that although "just suspend the customer's backups as soon as they go past 100%" initially sounds like a good idea, it may not be as it prevents the customer from removing whatever it was they backed up that they didn't mean to, i.e. fixing it themselves. Would (2) be more workable if there was some mechanism for the customer to go in and delete stuff from the backups in the space of time they have before they will actually get invoiced? Cheers, Andy -- http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting "I am the permanent milk monitor of all hobbies!" — Simon Quinlank