Proposal: quotas per team

[sumansaurabh]

The problem

AerolVM limits each sandbox: 1 CPU, 1 GB of memory and 10 GB of disk unless you ask for more. Each server also refuses new sandboxes when it runs out of room. Nothing limits a team, though. One team's job can start hundreds of sandboxes and leave no room for anyone else.

What you can do today

Count sandboxes in the service that calls AerolVM, and refuse creates there. Use lifecycle timers so forgotten sandboxes stop or get deleted.

A starting shape

• A quota belongs to an owner (see scoped tokens). It caps running sandboxes, total CPU, total memory and outbound bytes.
• A create that would go over is refused with a clear error that names the quota. The sandbox is never half-created.
• In a cluster, the quota counts sandboxes on every server, not just one.
• The operator sets quotas in a file, like the network policy file.

Questions for you

1. What would you cap first: the number of sandboxes, CPU and memory, or network bytes?
2. Should a team be able to burst over its quota for a short time?
3. Do you need quotas per runtime, such as a lower cap for Firecracker?
4. What should happen to running sandboxes when a quota is lowered?

How to weigh in

React with 👍 if you need this, and comment with your answers.

Want to talk it through? Book a call with the maintainer, or join the community call on the first Saturday of every month at 8 pm Pacific Time.

If your company needs this soon, you can sponsor the work. It is built in the open and ships to everyone.

[sumansaurabh]

Quick update: the dependency this needs — teams — shipped in v0.6.8 (alongside #646, #647 and #649). Every scoped avm_ token and every SSO identity is now bound to a team (team:<name>), and a team owns its sandboxes, so per-team quotas finally have something to count against.

This stays open as the next step. To scope it, it would help to know what you'd want to cap per team: concurrent sandboxes, total CPU/memory, create rate, or storage — and whether a hit should queue or reject. Say the word below and we'll turn it into a plan.