HDFS does not allocate capacity separately based on user. However, it is possible to use HDFS Quotas to enforce a limit on metadata consumption and space consumption by specific directories. A common setup is to create sub-directories dedicated to different users, apply HDFS Permissions on each directory to guarantee that only that user can write to the directory, and then set an appropriate quota on each directory. The permissions would guarantee that the user can only write to their directory. The quotas would limit metadata and space consumption by each user. The overall effect of this setup is that in a multi-tenant cluster, it prevents any one user from consuming all space in the cluster and harming processes of its other users.