File placeholder shortcut not getting created

[Reginald_D_Souz]

I have kept the file archiving vault to remove safety copies "after backup". I perform a run-now against the volume and see the report to it getting archive , but not create a placeholder for the same. I see in vault usage the number of files which got archived and don't have placeholder created as showing "waiting for backup". i do a backup of the vault store folder and the waiting for backup becomes zero. The problem is that the placholders are not getting created still. If i set it to immediate after archive placeholder gets created. I have the placeholder service already installed and given permissions... These files which were saying as archived by the report were added into the already archiving folder where previous shortcuts placeholder files are existing.... i open one file and it gets recalled.. When i do a run now against the volume the recalled file gets created into a shortcut but the others don't created in shortcut even after the backup of vault is done and the awaiting backup count is zero... Any idea why is this happening..

[Reginald_D_Souz]

One interesting observation...
- I have set safety copy to after backup. When i do a run now in normal mode against the volume , a report get generated and says archived... which is confirmed by the vault storage usage as the number of items waiting for backup is the same as the number of files which get archived... I do a backup of the vault and the count of waiting items for backup goes down to zero.. But still the placeholder shortcut doesn't get created...
- So now i again do a run now in normal mode against the volume, a report gets generated says that archive madeplacholder... now i confirm it and see that placeholders are created indeed....

Why is this happening only with the setting "After backup" in the vault store option of safety copy.

[Suresh_Vangara]

Reginald D'Souza

Are you restarting the storage service after the backup is complete ? I think this is required.

regards

sk

[MarkBarefoot]

When archiving files and using FSA the system does the process in 2 steps.

Step 1 it archives the files that correspond to your archiving policy. If this also has "remove safety copies after backup" then the last step will not happen until the backup has been completed.

Once the safety copy has been backed up, the 2nd step should occur on the next Archiving Run, this should convert the files to placeholders. If you read thru the Archiving reports in the Report folder on the EV server, you should see something like:-

ARCHIVE ReadyForArchive this is a report only mode
ARCHIVE Archived this has archived the file
ARCHIVE AwaitingBackup the scheduled archive has run BUT the DVS file has not been backed up
ARCHIVE MadePlaceholder placeholder has been created


So it kinda looks like this:-

Monday Scheduled Archive runs, archives the files, safety copies awaiting backup

Tuesday Scheduled Archive runs, DVS files not yet backed up, stay WaitingBackup - no placeholders created

Wednesday Backup runs, Scheduled Archive runs, Placeholders created


hope this helps!!

Mark

[Reginald_D_Souz]

So you say that the placeholder shortcut creation would only happen on the next archive run after the backup is done; which is the case i observered.
If this is so then it answers my question. Thanks for that...

But the problem is that this works only when i force run it and i have reports logged for confirmation.. But what about scheduled archive runs... How do i confirm that the archive has run. In my case i don't observe anything as such. I see the waiting for backup counter always zero which means archive hasn't run. Also my site schedule is 24 hrs and set to run every 15 minutes. Also at the file server level the schedule is set to 24hrs and every 15 minute run. There are no errors logged in EV. Is there some problem with the schedule.

[Micah_Wyenn]

Reg,
change ya schedule bud. Starting and stopping every 15 mins isn't condusive to good archiving practices. What's probably happening is that you're killing the job in the middle of it's "scanning", before it can do any real work.
try changing the archive job to kick off like 3 times a day, for 3 hours each cycle if you must be that aggressive.

micah

[Reginald_D_Souz]

Micah,
I'm not starting or stopping the schedule.. What i meant was that the schedule is highlighted to run for 24hrs with an interval of 15minutes rather than the 1 hr interval option available. I set this on a purpose to see if it archives and creates placeholder shortcuts automatically; without me doing a force run now.
I don't think it runs even after set to one hour interval. Also this volume is very small and finishes scanning with 3-4 minutes.. Do let me know if there is any way to know that the schedule is running by checking any logs

[Micah_Wyenn]

ah reg, sorry for the miscomm. Setting it to run fer 24hrs isn't really a best practice either, as it'll kick off a job at midnight, scan, finish and then not run til midnight again. Better to block out a 3 hr block or so and have that start and stop a couple of times a day (WARNING: Your mileage may vary, be smart and figure out what the best practice is for your site).

You can technically check the progress of the FSA task by bringing it up via it's properties, and then selecting status. It's not quite verbose tho. When you're troubleshooting something like this, the best thing I can recommend is dtraceing the fsatask verby. At least you'll see everything and be able to make a smart call from there if you need to.

micah

[MarkBarefoot]

Once you have set the scheduled time the process should kick-off at that time. To check this you can DTRACE the following processes:-

EvFileArcSvr
EvFilePrnSvr
EvFileSvrArcMngr
EvFileSyncSvr


Also in the Event Viewer you should see the following events (this is EV6) Event
ID 40983 FSA process starting, ID 40987 FSA finished.

You will also see the process report in the Reports folder within the EV installation directory.

[Reginald_D_Souz]

Thanks mate! That solved my problem. Yep i have kept some gaps between the runs for it to stop and resume run again. Now the placeholder are getting created after the backup and on the next scheduled runs. So this confirms that scheduling is working. Thanks a ton once again...