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KVS file arching question

bryan_geddes
Level 2
I'm looking for some advice regarding KVS file server archving.

I have been playing about with the file archving product in our lab but i 'm not convinced it is the right product for our environment.

I get the feeling that placing you file server data into an SQL databse is good if you want to turn your data into content addressable storage - CAS but all i'm interested in moving "static" data onto a cheaper media. None of our users use the CAS functionallity in KVS for Exchange so i doubt they would use it for file, so i 'm concerned about putting this data into a SQL database as i'm ultimately going to have some SQL issues.

Does anybody know if their are any alternative products that move data to another media (but leave link)? I don't require that the data be fully searchable via a browser.

If i could slave this data off to say, a SAN lun or a NAS device this would be the ideal solution. Also i would only have one server to recover in the event of Disaster recovery.

Any comments appreciated.
1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Accepted Solutions

Tremaine
Level 6
Employee Certified
I heard via the grapvine that V6 SP1 is supposed to have some performance improvements for FSA. Might want to wait for that then......Or you could play with both and let us know. :)

View solution in original post

17 REPLIES 17

David_Messeng1
Level 6
Hi Bryan,

SQL records the locations of the files in the EV store. Alta Vista does the indexing.

Plenty of HSM products out there but there are some advantages to using EV:

- You already have it for email so you don't need another system
- Archive Explorer allows you to "join up" the user's file and email archives
- It's cheap (no, really, it's good value compared to a lot of HSM)
- You get a big choice of APIs so you can pick your storage product - HSM is likely to be more restrictive
- You get some flexibility on compression (.DVS, .CAB) and pretty good data lifecycle managment (that you can integrate to your email lifecycle)
- It can be made compliant to SOX, etc
- Its simpler than HSM
- Version 6 has integration with NetBackup so you can recover files from Tape as well as disk (this is definately true for eMail, you might want to check it out more for FSA).

Gotta love that EV :)

Just turn off the indexing. I *think* you can always re-index later (although I might be making that bit up).

David
http://www.UDStech.com

bryan_geddes
Level 2
Thanks for the information i found it useful.

While testing FSA the product could not actually deal with a lot of my directory structure as it was more than 260 characters in length.

Has anyone else come accross this limitation? is their a work around?

Thanks in advanceMessage was edited by:
bryan geddes

David_Messeng1
Level 6
Bryan,

it must be able to cope with more than that. Some of our filenames are longer than 260 characters!!!.... Ghost?


David

bryan_geddes
Level 2
KVS generated event log messages stating that the directory structure was greater then 260 characters.

I'll run in report mode today and post the event log message.

David_Messeng1
Level 6
Ghost will know the answer. :)

Tremaine
Level 6
Employee Certified
Yep, this is really down to a limitation in the MS .Net runtime library. I believe that it is supposed to be worked around in V6 SP1 when it comes out.

David_Messeng1
Level 6
Pants. Can you get round it by mouting archive points further down the tree or something? (I know squat about FSA).

Tremaine
Level 6
Employee Certified
Nope. Does not seem to make a difference. I think it is probably down to the fact that the OS will always present the full path - from the root down.

But then even 'Windows' own explorer chokes on folders with paths longer than 260 chars :)

Warren_Davis_2
Level 3
Are you able to select the type of compression, or is the.CAB only available for migrations?

Simon_Jelley
Level 2
Employee Accredited
.CAB is the only format available for containerizing files and doing migrations to secondary storage

Warren_Davis_2
Level 3
Are the .DVS files put in a .CAB or does EV uncompress the files to their original and then place them in the .CAB during a migration? I am trying to find out if you can somehow use the .DVS files outside of EV. That is if I have a .DVS file is there a utility or some way to uncompress the file to it's original state?

Mike_Dowling
Level 4
Our entire EV system uses an EMC Centera backend. This product is really great. It is pricy so I would only recommend this if you are either already using the Centera, or have a very large mass of data to store. But you can add what's called the CUA, it is another node for the Centera, that allows you to essentially set up direct network share access to the Centera. It has the API built right in, no software to manage at all. On your end it looks like another file share. But everything is stored onto your CAS system, freeeing valuable expensive disk space.

What it does is show you all the files the same as a regular file share, you can map a network drive, or just put in the UNC into your run bar. But these files are just 'place holders', when a file is double clicked it pulls the file up using its content address and displays it. I use it here, we four Centeras' and one CUA (Centera Universal Access) node. I tried the file share archiving with KVS, it was buggy, I wasn't happy with it, this was over a year ago though. Microsoft searches were not returning archived items like they should have etc...

We're a big shop so we've already loaded 4.5 TB of email data (via KVS), and 2 TB of file share data through the CUA.

David_Messeng1
Level 6
FSA 1 year ago wasn't an option. It's much improved now.

Mike_Dowling
Level 4
They must of made monumentous strides with it then, when they did a demo here, it was complete garbage, maybe I'll test it in 5.0 SP5 and see how it works.

David_Messeng1
Level 6
Version 6, matey. Let me know what you think. I'm trying to talk our F&P boys into taking another look at this level (well actually I'll wait for SP1) but if it's still non-viable you might save me some embarassment :)

Tremaine
Level 6
Employee Certified
I heard via the grapvine that V6 SP1 is supposed to have some performance improvements for FSA. Might want to wait for that then......Or you could play with both and let us know. :)

__Drache__
Level 3
If they actually manage to make the whole archive point creation/management process into a GUI interface (They do it with Email and Archives after all), then I'd be far more excited by the thing.

That, and CA/DA support would be nice. Any idea if any of this is addressed in V6?