Hi
i don't think the current implementation over qtree is too bad. i'm also having shared volumes with dozens of qtrees in. as managing lots of volumes is overhead for you. and for the filer,
i was tryeng to think after seeing your response earlier this week what would be the right way. and i don't think there is a very good one.
OCUM - can't help you much except of reporting, alerting and maybe automating Quota uplift by itself (will require some work. mostly as OCUM not passing good arguments to the scripts it run - but i do have something similar that can be used as a base if you like).
WFA - i think you shoulden't take this route for the following reasons:
1. it have ability to change quota. but there is no good ready wizard for it. you will need to customize it a lot.
2. i don't think you will be able to group the objects and associate them to owners who will be allowed to do the change. (you could maybe just limit it in the wizard by name but that's it).
3. WFA front end is based on flash now. proper browsers dropped support for flash. so i would avoid investing in this tool until NetApp re-write the front end in another tool. or maybe detaching the tool (who knows)
PowerShell.- you can maybe create a wizard pretty easily. and publish it via Citrix/remote desktop/icon whatever you guys using. handle the credentials with it is a bit problematic. as NetApp PS not doing pass trough and powerhsell don't have efficient secure way to store credentials. so you might need to give users the exact ONTAPI permissions to do so. and prompt them for their own credentials again.
.NET web and using the API - i think that maybe the right way to do it as you can securly store credentials and easy give useres access to it from any browsers . i'm just not sure how complex it will be as i didn't touched back-end web tech for years.
to summry. avoid investing in WFA for now. if you willing to only have monitoring or automated action - go with OCUM. if you need actual self service. go with the last two as they will be the quickest and flexible for your task.
G.