Reports On Terabytes Of Data

Reporting efficiency through dispersed workload, scanning, and compression

Novell File Reporter was developed to examine and report on terabytes of data—in other words, millions of files, directories, and subdirectories. To do so efficiently, Novell File Reporter disperses the load of work between the NFR Engine and NFR Agents.

The NFR Engine is the mechanism that runs Novell File Reporter. It can reside on a Novell Open Enterprise Server, a SUSE® Linux Enterprise Server, or a Microsoft Windows 2003 or 2008 Server. In a small organization, the NFR Engine could be run on a server that was used for other purposes as well. In a larger organization, the NFR Engine would likely be run as a standalone server.

---

The NFR Engine does the following:

• Schedules the scans that are conducted by the NFR Agents
• Processes the scans and compiles them for inclusion in a report
• Provides all of the report information to the user interface
• Determines that a condition has been met to start a triggered report as opposed to a scheduled report
• Monitors how many agents are online

NFR Agents are compact programs that run on many types of commercially available operating systems, with more planned for the future. Currently, NFR Agents are available for:

• Novell Open Enterprise Server 2
• SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
• Novell NetWare®
• Microsoft Windows 2003 or 2008 Server

NFR Agents can also be set up as proxy agents for reporting on the contents of Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices in Active Directory networks, and for virtual server volumes in server clusters in both eDirectory™ and Active Directory networks. The NFR Agent can examine and report on a variety of file systems including Novell NSS, Traditional, NCP, Windows NTFS, Reiser, and ext3.

Through the NFR Agent, Novell File Reporter takes a "scan" of the file system of the storage resource at the moment it is examined. A storage resource can be a server volume, a Novell Storage Manager policy, a network folder path, or a Linux mount point. The scan includes comprehensive information about things like:

• File types being stored
• If these files are duplicated (and if so, where they reside)
• When files were created
• When files were last opened
• And much more

You can take a scan at any time, but we recommend you do it after normal business hours to minimize its effect on network performance.

Scans are indexed and compressed data specific to a storage resource. They are decompressed only when data within the scan is used to generate a report. In other words, a scan of a particular storage resource would only be utilized if it included content that was part of the specifications of a report request.

With terabytes of information being examined and reported on, the size of a report, when decompressed, can be in the gigabytes. For this reason, when you want to view a report (or more likely, view very specific information through a filtered request), Novell File Reporter decompresses only the information you wish to see from the report for viewing on a computer workstation monitor.