FSA Quirks with lots of files

[MBaran5]

After some DTrace, here's the issue.

I have a NAS called NTPC1300. I have a Volume on that NAS called USER. Within USER is about 2000 folders of everyones home share.

I've chosen NTPC1300 as my file server, and USER as my volume.

I've chosen 5 folders inside of Volume to archive. They are pc02010, pc05155, pc05064, pc03175, pc05015.

My eVault admin account has r/w access to all 2000 folders under the \\ntpc1300\user

When I "Run Now" an FSA Task, the first few times, It ran and began to collect the files (Mod Date >1 Year) but would never "Complete"

Now when I run it and DTrace it , It seems to parse through my 5 folders then begin to scan and look for mount points in other folder's I've not specified for archiving.

"\\?\UNC\ntpc1300.cruises.princess.com\User\arslgac\Business Objects\common\3.5\crystalreportviewers1
15\help\ja\advanceddhtmlviewer\images:EVArchivePoint.xml Err: 2
41,230 15:03:23.640 [5,712] (EvFsaArchivingTask) <6492> EV-L {Folder.IsMarkedAsRootFolder} Checking
if folder: \\?\UNC\ntpc1300.cruises.princess.com\User\arslgac\Business Objects\common\3.5\crystalrep
ortviewers115\help\ja\advanceddhtmlviewer\images is marked as a Root Folder"

It's trying to either scan or vault everything!

HELP! Nothing ever completes and It's super frustrating. At this point we dont want to vault all of NTPC1300\USER

[John_Chisari]

 Did you by any chance put an archive point on the USER volume?  If you did it will scan and archive the whole User volume.

Have a look at the ArchivePoints GUI - right click on the USER volume in the EV console.

[MBaran5]

When I opened it, it was selected in blue as it is in the 2nd screen shot.

Once it loads, and I scroll down, my folders that I've listed in Folders, have the archive point icon...

[MBaran5]

Everytime I start the task again, it starts over from the A's

[TonySterling]

What version are you?

EV 8 has FSA Checkpointing. 

[MBaran5]

This is EV8 with SP1

[Paul_Grimshaw]

Are you doing the run now from the volume level? If so I get a warning message stating:-

Running the FSA Task from a volume may cause a loss of checkpointing information if there is an imcomplete task scan which has been run by selecting the task under the servers. It is always recommended to run the task from the server level.

[Paul_Grimshaw]

Just run a test on my system and it works this way

[MBaran5]

I always run it from the server level.

It is normal that it should scan ALL folders in the volume, even if they're not ear marked for Vaulting?

Will this scan, once completed once, not run again. I've never let it finish (2000 folders, I can see it taking 12+ hours) if it going to do this every time the job runs?

[MBaran5]

So in the time of the entire evening, the process went back to running, from processing, and looks like it touched all 2000 folders.

Yet, the status of last run still said,

Run Mode : Normal
Folders Processed : 0
Files Matching 'Archive' : 0
etc... they're all 0

[MBaran5]

I just placed an old file (more than 1 year modified) into a directory that is to be archived, started the process and it seemed to skip over it and begin scanning from the A's again.. :\

[MichelZ]

According to the Admin Guide (v8):
The File System Archiving task checkpoints its progress. If the task is stopped
before it has completely processed a volume, then when the task next starts it
continues from the point of interruption.

So you might have stumbled upon a bug, not sure.

Might be worth to open a case with SYMC here.

Cheers

[Paul_Grimshaw · Accepted solution]

It is normal that it should scan ALL folders in the volume, even if they're not ear marked for Vaulting? YES it will walk through every folder.

OK so what should happen is that a checkpoint file should be created and updated every 60 seconds indicating where the process is at. If it has walked through the entire volume then the checkpoint file will be deleted. You can access reports of the Run Now by looking in the following location:-

C:\Program Files\Enterprise Vault\Reports\FSA\File System Archiving Task\ArchiveRunNow\Completed

So if you are saying that it starts at A again that is indicating to me that the process is completing successfully and hence there is no checkpointing occurring as it is unnecessary.

Really for 100% confirmation I would need to see a DTRACE of the FSAARCHIVINGTASK process of the full run