Qtrees enable you to partition your data without incurring the overhead associated with a volume. You might create qtrees to organize your data, or to manage one or more of the following factors: quotas, backup strategy, security style, and CIFS oplocks setting.
You can limit the size of the data used by a particular project, by placing all of that project's files into a qtree and applying a tree quota to the qtree.
You can use qtrees to keep your backups more modular, to add flexibility to backup schedules, or to limit the size of each backup to one tape.
If you have a project that needs to use NTFS-style security, because the members of the project use Windows files and applications, you can group the data for that project in a qtree and set its security style to NTFS, without requiring that other projects also use the same security style.
If you have a project using a database that requires CIFS oplocks to be off, you can set CIFS oplocks to off for that project's qtree, while allowing other projects to retain CIFS oplocks.