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how-to · Reviewed 2026-11-02 GA

Download restrictions

Download Restrictions cap how much data members of a workspace can pull out of Rescale over a rolling period. It is an exfiltration control rather than a cost control: it limits volume leaving the platform, and it warns you before the cap is hit rather than only afterwards.

Find it at Workspace Admin > Policies > Download Restrictions.

What a restriction is made of​

A restriction is two limits measured over one window, plus two warnings on the way to them. You set a cap on the number of files and a cap on their total size, you choose how long a period those are counted over, and you choose the two percentages at which members are warned that they are approaching the cap.

FieldWhat it sets
Number of Files LimitHow many files may be downloaded within the period
Size Limit (MB)How much data, in megabytes, may be downloaded within the period
Restriction Period In DaysThe length of the rolling window the two limits are measured over
First Alert PercentageThe share of a limit that triggers the first warning
Second Alert PercentageThe share that triggers the second, later warning

The file count and the size limit are both enforced, and the one reached first stops further downloads. A workspace can therefore hit its cap on a handful of very large result files or on thousands of small ones, which is worth bearing in mind when you set the two numbers: they need to be plausible together rather than each plausible alone.

Set the values and click Save. Delete removes the restriction entirely and returns the workspace to unrestricted downloads.

Choosing the numbers​

The period is a rolling window, not a calendar month. A 30-day period means the last 30 days from now, continuously recalculated, so allowance is returned gradually rather than all at once on the first of the month.

Set the two alert percentages apart. They exist so the first is an early signal and the second is a final warning. Putting them close together, say 85% and 90%, collapses them into one event and wastes the mechanism. Something like 50% and 85% gives a genuine early warning and then a last call.

Size in MB gets large quickly. Simulation results are routinely tens of gigabytes, so a limit meant to be generous can turn out to be restrictive if it is entered an order of magnitude short. Rescale counts a gigabyte as 1,024 megabytes, the same binary units used to bill storage, so 100 GB is 102,400 MB rather than 100,000.

This restricts members, not administrators

Download Restrictions govern what workspace members can pull down. Plan the limit around normal engineering work, since a single post-processing session can involve a large download. Otherwise members will hit the cap doing their jobs and treat it as an outage.

Limits this is confused with​

Download Restrictions govern data leaving the platform, and two other controls govern data at rest. Storage and transfer limits cap how much a workspace may store and move in total, so they constrain the volume a member could download rather than the act of downloading it. File retention decides how long files survive before being trashed and purged, which can remove the files someone was about to fetch. If a member reports that they cannot get their results, the question is which of the three stopped them, and only this one produces a warning first.