Archiving - RealSharePoint.com

2/17/2009

Upcoming TechNet Webinar on Best Practices in SharePoint Administration

Ever wondered how much is it costing your organization in supporting your SharePoint environment? Or perhaps you are looking for ways to simplifying your deployment, to be able to achieve success with the constraints you are bound by. Check out this upcoming webinar on TechNet on “Best Practices in SharePoint Administration – Lower Admin Costs by Doing More with Less”. The key is really about doing more with less. In today’s economy, we all need to be wary of how we control, deploy, and protect our investments, so that we can realize the return that we are expecting. The same applies to SharePoint – successful implementation requires proper design, effective governance, continuous availability, and vigorous protection.

There are various cost drivers when deploying or management SharePoint. These could be IT productivity costs, infrastructure costs, or costs for safeguarding your environment. Without the appropriate support, your organization runs the risk of treating SharePoint just like another document repository, and that’s really not doing it justice. The last thing you want on SharePoint is an unmanaged environment with stale content, and unsatisfied users.

So, check it out. The webinar will be held live on Wednesday, February 25, 2009, at 10am PT. To register, simply click on this registration link.

Posted at 3:46 PM by Andrew Yeung | Category: Administration; Archiving; Backup and Recovery; Compliance; Events and Happenings | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (1)

2/10/2009

Document Archiving Based on Custom Metadata

DocAve's Extension Archiver provides SharePoint administrators (and end users) the ability to archive SharePoint content based on a very flexible rule-based system. For those of you unfamiliar with this product, it transparently takes content out of the SP content database and puts it into the file system - end users don't see a change (except maybe for an icon overlay).

The rule-based engine that DocAve uses allows for very flexible criterias, such as archiving all documents that haven't been accessed in 3 months, created by a certain user, etc... One very powerful rule that empowers your users and support your workflow is the ability to archive based on metadata.

You can setup a rule for archiving documents (or items) based on the value of custom columns. You can, for example, define a custom column called "Archive" and set it to yes/no. The idea is that if users change the value of this field to Yes, the document will be archived.

You can setup the above example by going to

DocAve's Administration functional area, Extension Archiver, then Plan Builder
Select "Rules" in the middle pane
Select "Document"
Click on "Column Settings"
Select "Customized Metadata" tab
"Add" a field

Type in the Field name: "Archive"
Field Type is "Yes/No"
Condition is "Exactly"
Value is "Yes"

Accept
Setup the rest of the plan as usual

What will happen once that is setup is that the next time this Archiving plan runs, any Documents within the selected scope that has the Archive column value of "Yes" will be archived.

Tie this to your workflow and business process, and you are on your way to SQL Database space saving nirvana.

Posted at 2:35 PM by Han Wang | Category: Archiving | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

1/22/2009

AvePoint Releases DocAve v5.1.1

Holding true to its reputation for delivering pioneering solution enhancements before the competition has even caught up with its last round, AvePoint has released DocAve v5.1.1 - which includes some pretty amazing upgrades to the DocAve v5 platform released last fall. Here's a quick rundown of the cool new gadgets and features you'll find in this latest release...

Real-time Extranet Replication

DocAve Replicator provides for both live and scheduled extranet synchronization. By enabling one-way and two-way replication over HTTP/HTTPS internet protocols, DocAve Replicator unburdens administrators from having to open additional ports in their firewall, or ensure that all replication agents are within the same network.

Administration Security Trimming, Dead-Account Detection/Deletion, One-Step Permissions Transfer

DocAve SharePoint Administrator now empowers SharePoint administrators to delegate security management to site collection administrators – providing them trimmed views of, and control over, only content and users for which they have been given appropriate permissions. Additionally, SharePoint Administrator now includes an automated dead-account recognition, transfer, and deletion utility. This powerful tool compares discrete SharePoint accounts with those present in Active Directory, and provides administrators with flexible options to handle asynchronous account events, including account deletion and permissions transfer to new accounts.

End-User Archiving and Comprehensive Archive Reporting

DocAve Extension Archiver now lets administrators empower their end-users with the ability to archive content directly within the SharePoint interface. Via the Site Actions menu within SharePoint, end-users can archive content for which they have permissions, enabling business-apprpriate archiving levels and optimal platform performance. Additionally, DocAve’s administrative report now provides comprehensive archiving information, including archived site size, number of items archived, and SQl storage re-patriation statistics.

Total EMC Centera Integration

Now EMC Centera users can leverage the solution’s potent du-duplication capabilities fully when managing DocAve archive and backup data. DocAve Backup and Recovery and Extension Archiver empower EMC Centera users to enable integrated de-duping of their DocAve archive and backup stores, to ensure optimal storage resource utilization.

XML-Based Mapping Profile Integration for Migrations

DocAve Migrator Suite lets administrators import and export XML mapping profiles to further streamline migration jobs requiring extensive mapping. Now administrators can edit profiles in any XML editor, upload the file into DocAve, and both manage and track the authored files via the DocAve interface.

To learn more about the DocAve v5.1.1 release and to download a fully-enabled trial version of the platform, check out the AvePoint website.

Posted at 11:26 AM by Tucker Hall | Category: Archiving; Backup and Recovery; Compliance; Deployment Architecture; Events and Happenings; SharePoint News; Migration; Administration; DocAve Tips and Tricks | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

1/20/2009

Much Ado About Content - in SharePoint, that is....

If you’re like most organizations, you are probably aware of the ever increasing amounts of data storage required for your SharePoint environment. Consider this scenario: you are an average medium-sized business with roughly 2,000 SharePoint users. Each user generates roughly 2MB of content each day, either by creating new content, or updating documents and creating new versions. This means,

2MB x 2000 users = 4,000 MB, or 4GB of content is created each day, taking up resources in the SQL Server content database
Over the course of a year, with 220 business days, this would add up to 900 GB or close to 1 TB of data that gets created
If you were to follow general guidelines of limiting each content database to 100GB, you will need a new content database every 20 to 25 days or so…

This seems to be an administration nightmare, or worse yet, sooner or later, your databases and SQL storage will spiral out of control. If left unmanaged, that is a LOT of data that is residing in those content databases. In addition, as most SharePoint-related content is unstructured and stored as BLOBs in SQL Server, performance and reliability could be adversely impacted, posing serious issues to SharePoint as a mission-critical platform.

Inactive data typically grows exponentially over time. Resources that are required for active operational data are often consumed or saturated by the growth of inactive data. Consider a document library, as documents are constantly revised, incremental versions with full file sizes are maintained in SharePoint. Consider another scenario: a project-oriented organization that constantly creates new sites to track their ongoing projects. As projects complete, entire sites still remain in the content databases. As inactive data continues to grow, users would start to experience diminishing service levels. Additional spend may be required for more servers or more computing horsepower. In addition, as databases continue to grow, longer backup and recovery windows may jeopardize the SLA’s that are currently in place. Just like file systems and mail servers have leveraged archiving solutions to better manage data growth, SharePoint can benefit from an archiving solution as well. A proper archiving solution is rule-based, and moves inactive content that is deemed relevant to tiered storage areas. In addition, accessibility, including the ability to search and retrieve data when needed should still be provided.

When planning for SharePoint archiving, ask yourselves these questions:

How do I identify content that is no longer needed, and can be archived away?
Do I have to archive away entire sites, or is there away to archive selected document libraries, versions of a document, or attachments?
Once content is archived away to storage, how long are they retained?
What happens after content is archived away, can I still continue to search or access the content? If I need to restore the content to continue working with it, am I able to do so?
Can I filter out content and delete those as opposed to archiving them away?
Can rules be defined and jobs scheduled to automatically archive content away?
How to I know which storage tier I will allocate to SharePoint archives?

Posted at 12:07 PM by Andrew Yeung | Category: Archiving; SharePoint Tips and Tricks | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

12/2/2008

Protecting SharePoint Data - Storage Experts Chime In

Lauren Whitehouse, analyst with Enterprise Strategy Group, and Nilesh Mehta, president of NGenius Solutions coauthor of the book SharePoint 2007: The Definitive Guide from O'Reilly, were recently featured in an article on Enterprise Storage Forum discussing options for protecting your SharePoint data. With SharePoint's growing popularity, there's no denying that the amount of content stored in these databases make storage and recovery of SharePoint content absolutely critical to most organizations. According to Whitehouse, because all content is centralized in a database repository, storage/retrieval as well as backup and recovery becomes rather complex. Essentially, Whitehouse noted, "you've gone from a file server and a couple of PC's to a couple of clustered database systems and multiple file servers, in potentially multiple locations, to store [your] documents."

Because of complexity of protecting SharePoint data, both Whitehouse and Mehta recommend that enterprises invest in a third-party SharePoint backup and recovery utility. Whitehouse went on to say, "AvePoint has probably the best SharePoint backup, recovery and archiving solution".

Now Whitehouse mentioned archiving, which is something that she also recommended. In order to better manage your organization's overall storage capacity, it is generally advisable to remove the inactive, persistent data from the environment.

The take away, you gotta be smart in managing your storage, and you gotta take regular backups of your SharePoint content. "That will save your life, " said Mehta.

Posted at 8:19 PM by Andrew Yeung | Category: SharePoint News; Backup and Recovery; Archiving | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

9/9/2008

DocAve v5 Released!

The latest version of the DocAve Software Platform by AvePoint has been released to the public! This new and improved version has been re-worked from the ground up to make it the most robust and powerful suite of products available for SharePoint infrastructure management. The GUI has undergone tremendous changes from its predecessor, and users will now have the flexibility to protect SharePoint "in style" with the new navigation enhancements.

Along with the GUI, DocAve 5 offers new products such as Deployment Manager, the Automation Center for Data Protection (including the Criticality Matrix), migration from Lotus Notes, Real-time Replication, and several other enhancements to the original DocAve suite.

Check out your demo today!

Posted at 9:44 AM by John Hodges | Category: SharePoint News; Archiving; Backup and Recovery; Administration; Compliance; Events and Happenings; Migration; Deployment Architecture | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

6/30/2008

Best of TechEd 2008 Winners Announced!

The folks at Windows IT Pro and SQL Server Magazine recently announced the winners of the Best of Tech Awards. Here are the winners from the SharePoint-related categories...

Best SharePoint Product
The winner in this category is the AvePoint DocAve Software Platform. SharePoint use is exploding, and the DocAve Software Platform provides an integrated environment for SharePoint management, disaster recovery, and real-time backup. A free discovery tool helps you find SharePoint installations in your enterprise , and a consistent user interface make managing all of these features a snap.

Messaging
The winner is Azaleos OneServer Virtual Edition, with features ranging from its polished interface to its wealth of management and analysis options. If you’re looking to virtualize your Exchange environment, Azaleos OneServer Virtual Edition is a good place to start.

Productivity and Collaboration
Giving users access to company information on the road is essential, and Colligo Contributor Pro allows users to access and edit SharePoint content both online and offline. A handy Colligo add-in for Outlook also makes publishing SharePoint content as easy as dragging and dropping an email from one screen location to another. For all these reasons—and more—Colligo Contributor Pro is the winner in the Productivity and Collaboration category.

Posted at 5:44 PM by Tucker Hall | Category: Events and Happenings; Administration; Archiving; Backup and Recovery; Compliance; Deployment Architecture; Migration; SharePoint News | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

6/5/2008

Welcome to RealSharePoint!

Thanks for joining us! Our goal at RealSharePoint is to build a dynamic online forum where SharePoint users and Admins of all stripes can discuss, learn, collaborate, and exhange knowledge about the coolest platform on the planet.

SharePoint has become the fastest growing product in Microsoft history, and we (more about who "we" are in a minute) knew it was time to create an online home for the brightest minds to discuss SP's evolution, exhange technical expertise, and deliver straight-forward, reliable assistance to the greater SharePoint community.

Now, who are we? Full Disclaimer: We are a handful of staff at AvePoint, an infrastructure management software provider for SharePoint Products and Technolologies. As many of you are probably aware, we have been in the SharePoint game for quite a while. Our flagship software product - DocAve - delivers Backup & Recovery, HA, Administration, Replication, and Migration solutions for SP. (One final plug, we just won "Best of Tech Ed" at Tech 2008! Whoohoo! Ok that's it, I'm done plugging the company.)

In the interest of full disclosure, we think it's important we let it be known who's behind this forum. But in all honesty, promoting our product (or our company) is not what we created this for. RealSharePoint is our way to further connect with the amazing and dynamic SP community. To be a part of the conversation. With RealSharePoint.com we hope to create a place where ideas can be exchanged. Where bugs can be debugged. Where hurdles can be hurdled. (or does one "dehurdle" a hurdle? Anyhoo, I digress.) To put it simply: We really adore SharePoint, and we want to learn from and share with others who feel the same.

Over the next several weeks, we will be building out this site with additional blogs (dedicated to specific SharePoint concerns and quanderies), lots of discussion forums, webinars, industry whitepapers, videos, and SharePoint/techie event highlights. So welcome! Keep checking into RealSharePoint.com, and help our new community flourish!

Posted at 10:47 PM by Tucker Hall | Category: SharePoint News; Events and Happenings; Administration; Archiving; Backup and Recovery; Compliance; Deployment Architecture; Migration | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)