Use this document as a reference for any frequently asked questions concerning Storage Maximizer.

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1 Dell TM Storage Maximizer for SharePoint 2.6 s August 2014 Use this document as a reference for any frequently asked questions concerning Storage Maximizer. Installation Remote BLOB Storage Backup and Restore Removing SharePoint Objects Dashboard Statistics Storage Maximizer Internal Jobs SharePoint Service Packs and Cumulative Updates Installation 1. Where do I install Dell Storage Maximizer? It is recommended that you run the Dell Storage Maximizer Autorun on an application server in your farm rather than a web front end. This will install the Dell Storage Maximizer Configuration tool which you can use to deploy and make future configuration changes the Storage Maximizer installation. 2. Do I need to install it on every server in the farm? No. When you run the Dell Storage Maximizer Configuration Tool, it will automatically deploy the necessary software components to the other farm servers. 3. What do I need to do if I install or replace an existing farm server? Use the Dell Storage Maximizer Configuration Tool to deactivate and reactivate the feature. This will automatically deploy and configure all necessary software components to the new server. 4. I know I have to install Microsoft Remote BLOB Storage. Which version of RBS do I install and where do I install it? Dell Storage Maximizer works with all the supported versions of SQL Server that Microsoft SharePoint 2013 supports ( If you are using SQL 2008 R2 Service Pack 1, you must install Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Remote BLOB Store from 1

2 If you are using SQL 2012, you must install Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Remote BLOB Store from here: See the section Have I installed the correct version of RBS in the Storage Maximizer for SharePoint Quick Start Guide for additional instructions. Install this component on every server in your farm including Search Servers and all other application servers. You do not need to install this on the server hosting the SQL Server installation. 5. What shares do I need to create before I install? You must create at least one share called the Working Storage Share before installation. Give the share such permission so that all the Farm Managed accounts have at least Read/Write access. Once you start creating storage definitions, you may need to create one or more shares with the same level of access permissions. Remote BLOB Storage 1. What happens when I enable a content database for Remote BLOB Storage? When you enable a content database for Remote BLOB Storage you are registering the Dell Storage Maximizer Remote BLOB Storage Provider on the content database. All new document uploads or document changes made from now on are written by SharePoint to the Remote BLOB Storage provider to process. With Storage Maximizer installed, the data will be written to the configured Working Storage Share for evaluation. The Dell Storage Maximizer Working Storage Processor Job runs periodically to check this new data and will evaluate it against your storage definitions. It will then move the data to the correct target share, or back to the content database depending on you definitions. 2. What happens if I disable a content database for Remote BLOB Storage in Configuration Tool, do my clients lose access to the externalized data? No. All externalized data will still be accessible to clients. Disabling the content database for Remote BLOB Storage will prevent new data from being written to the Dell Storage Maximizer Remote BLOB Storage Provider. All new document uploads or document changes will result in the data being stored by SharePoint into the content database. 3. I have uploaded a document to SharePoint and now I see lots of files on the target share. Why are there so many files written to the target? With the introduction of SharePoint 2013, Microsoft implemented Shredding to improve and optimize the storage of large documents in the content database where many versions may exist. Shredding breaks a document in many smaller chunks or shreds. These shreds can be shared among many versions of the same document and only new shreds are written for the parts of the document that differs between versions; therefore, saving space. Each of the files you see on disk is a shred of the document. SharePoint tracks and automatically recreates the document from these shreds when the document is read. 2

3 4. When I permanently delete a document from SharePoint I can see that the shreds on the target do not get deleted. What s going on? Do I need delete them manually? When a document is removed from SharePoint, the document s externalized data is not immediately removed from the target. They are retained on the target for the number of days you specified in the Retention Period column in the Configuration Tool (when you first enabled the content database for Remote BLOB Storage). This allows for simpler recovery from where you may have to recover an entire content database from backup. If you have recovered a content database from a prior backup and in the interim documents had been removed from SharePoint and if the BLOBs were removed immediately from target, then the restored content database would have broken documents as the external shreds are gone. Shreds for deleted documents are removed automatically by the Microsoft Remote BLOB Storage Maintainer executable that is automatically scheduled to run in the Task Scheduler. CAUTION: Never delete shreds directly from any of the shares in use by Dell Storage Maximizer. This can lead to loss to inaccessible documents and potential data loss. See the entries on Backup and Restore for further information. Backup and Restore 1. What do I need to back up as part of my normal schedule? Back up your entire content database as usual and include the SharePoint farm Configuration database as well (you should be backing that up anyway), as it contains some Storage Maximizer data. Back up all of the Storage Maximizer shares, including the Working Storage and all the target shares. 2. In what order should I do this? Back up all the SQL content first, and then back up your shares. 3. If I need to restore a content database, what do I need to restore to my target shares? Use the file backup associated with you content database backup. You do not need to restore all of the BLOBs to your target shares. Since BLOBs never change once they are written (Remote BLOB Storage considers BLOBs immutable) you can just restore BLOBs that are not present on the file shares only. 4. What is the relationship between the Retention Period set during Remote BLOB Storage Configuration and my backup cycle retention? The retention period controls how many days after a document is removed from SharePoint before the documents shreds are removed from external storage. In order for you to restore any content database backups without having to restore shredded files from the file backup, the retention period for your content databases should be set to the maximum number of days you may retain a daily backup. So if you have a 60 day backup cycle, you should retention period to 60 days. 3

4 5. We keep backups from each quarter throughout the year and send these away for long term storage and archiving. What else do I need to back up? In addition to the normal Microsoft SQL Server backups (content databases + SharePoint Configuration Database), you will need to preserve the externalized data. Back up the target shares and send that backup for storage with the SQL Server backups. Removing SharePoint Objects 1. I want to remove a content database from a SharePoint farm and it had externalized data. I have moved the content to other content databases and I am ready to remove the content database. What else should I do before deleting the content database? Removing a content database before the Microsoft Maintainer Task can clean up shreds from your targets will result in files on your target which will never be removed. To force cleanup: a. From the Dell Storage Maximizer Configuration Tool, select Change Configuration Manage Storage Provider Change. b. Set the Retention Period column for the content database to zero days and apply the change. c. Run Microsoft Task Scheduler and locate the Dell Storage Maximizer node. d. Locate and run the scheduled task for the content database. 2. I had a site collection which has externalized document with its own Storage Definition. I have deleted the site collection and now want to remove the Storage Definition. I cannot remove the Storage Definition as it says that it still has externalized data. What is going on? SharePoint does not immediately delete site collections from the content database. It does this gradually over a number of days / weeks. Because of this the Microsoft Remote BLOB Storage Maintainer scheduled task considers all the externalize shreds still referenced by live documents, and will not remove the external shred files. Once SharePoint physically removes the site collection records from the content database, the task will remove the shred files from external storage after the content database retention period has elapsed. Set the Storage Definition to inactive and monitor the number of BLOBs associated with that storage definition. Once it reaches zero, you can delete the Storage Definition. 4

5 Dashboard Statistics 1. How are the dashboard statistics calculated? The rows show internal metrics, external metrics, and totals. The columns show size, document counts, and BLOB (shred) counts. Internal Documents count is calculated by counting the number of unique documents that have any internal shreds. Documents size is calculated by summing the size of all the internal documents. Document shreds are calculated by counting the number of internal shreds. External Document count is calculated by counting the number of unique documents that have any external shreds. Document size is calculated by summing the size of all external shreds. Document shreds are calculated by counting the number of external shreds. NOTE: All values are calculated from information within the content database, so these numbers may differ from the number of physical files you may see on your targets. 2. During my testing I noticed that a checked out document was counted as two documents. Is this correct? Yes. SharePoint creates a new hidden document when a document is checked out. When the document is checked in it will be counted as one document again. 3. How often are the statistics calculated? An internal Dell Storage Maximizer Job runs every hour to recalculate the statistics. You can change this schedule. From SharePoint Central Administration web site, select Monitoring Job Definitions. Modify the job Dell Storage Maximizer - Storage Statistics Collection and set the schedule to your preference. NOTE: Although efficient, it is not recommended to run the job more than every hour as your farm performance may be affected. Storage Maximizer Internal Jobs 1. What SharePoint jobs are created during installation and what are their purposes? Three SharePoint jobs are created during installation: Dell Storage Maximizer Working Storage Processor. This job monitors the Working Storage share for newly uploaded documents and moves the data appropriately to the targets shares or back to SharePoint. Do not modify the schedule or disable this job. Dell Storage Maximizer Storage Statistics Collection. This job populates the Dell Storage Maximizer Dashboard statistics and runs hourly. Dell Storage Maximizer Health Analysis. This job identifies internal consistency issues and reports them to the Dell Storage Maximizer Dashboard message log. This job runs weekly. 2. I noticed that these jobs seem to be randomly scheduled to run on any server in the farm. I would like these jobs to only run on a specific application server. How do I do that? A farm property can be set to specify which server you want these jobs. You can either do this before or after you install Dell Storage Maximizer. 5

6 Before installing Dell Storage Maximizer: a. Open the SharePoint 2013 Management Shell (PowerShell console). b. Type the following, replacing servername with the actual name of the application server on which you want the jobs to be scheduled: $farm = Get-SPFarm $farm.properties[ Dell.SMAX.ApplicationServer ] = servername $farm.update() c. Close the SharePoint 2013 Management Shell. d. Install Dell Storage Maximizer. e. From SharePoint Central Administration, select Monitoring Scheduled Jobs. The jobs should be scheduled to run on the server you specified. After installing Dell Storage Maximizer, or if you want to change your previous selection: a. Follow steps a through c in Instructions before Dell Storage Maximizer. b. Start Dell Storage Maximizer Configuration Tool. c. Click Change Configuration. d. Click the Deactivate link. e. Click Yes to proceed and wait for the operation to complete. f. Click the Activate link and wait for the operation to complete g. From SharePoint Central Administration, select Monitoring Scheduled Jobs. The jobs should be scheduled to run on the server you specified. IMPORTANT: While performing the above steps, access to externalized documents is temporarily unavailable, so you may want to perform this operation during a maintenance window. Once the Dell Storage Maximizer feature is activated, normal operations will resume. 6

7 SharePoint Service Packs and Cumulative Updates 1. Do I need to do anything before applying Microsoft SharePoint Service Packs or SharePoint Cumulative Updates? No. Follow the normal recommend practice of making a full and complete backup of your SharePoint farm before applying the Microsoft SharePoint Service Pack / Cumulative Update. Apply the Service Pack / Cumulative Update and run the SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard to complete the upgrade of the content database Schemas if required by the update. 2. Do I need to do anything after applying Microsoft SharePoint Service Packs or SharePoint Cumulative Updates? Yes. These updates remove some of the Dell Storage Maximizer database objects from the content databases. This will result in your end users not being able to store or retrieve externalized documents. To correct this, after you have completed applying the Service Pack / Cumulative Update to all your farm servers and run the SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard, follow these additional steps: a. On the server where Dell Storage Maximizer Configuration tool is installed, login with the Farm Account. b. Select Start Dell Storage Maximizer Storage Maximizer Management Shell. c. Type: Install-SMAXDatabaseScripts. This will reapply the missing database objects to the content databases. d. Close the Dell Storage Maximizer Management Shell. 7

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