1.2 Deployment Scenarios

Novell Dynamic File Services can help solve key storage problems. The scenarios in this section are intended as examples to represent a few ways that DynamicFS can be applied in your environment.

1.2.1 Students: Essential versus Non-Essential Files

Abraham works for a large university system with thousands of students each semester. Students have home directories to use as a central storage location for their personal files and homework. The storage device is nearing capacity. Abraham needs to expand capacity for students without disrupting access to their essential academic files.

Understanding the Data

The student home directories contain numerous media files for music and photos that consume large portions of the available storage. The files have a variety of file extensions.

The Dynamic File Services Solution

Abraham creates a Dynamic File Services standard pair on the server where the primary path is a folder that contains all user home directories. As the secondary path in the pair, he uses a UNC path on a remote filer storage device. He creates a policy that moves certain file types from the primary path to the secondary path every night between 2:00 a.m. to 4:00 a.m. Abraham specifies the file types as audio, video, and images, in order to move a broad range of files based on a file extension’s MIME file type or perceived file type.

Relocating the media files helps free the needed space on the primary path while allowing users to access their media files via a merged view of the data. Users are not aware of the physical location of their files.

1.2.2 Healthcare: Active versus Historical Files

Joe works for a research hospital that recently completed a multiple-year effort to digitize its patient records from 1900 to the present. Joe wants to assure that there is sufficient storage capacity for the current and future patient records while still making the older records available to researchers in the hospital and its affiliated university.

Understanding the Data

The patient records are generated in the regular course of health care delivery. The individual patient files contain a broad spectrum of documents, including patient histories, diagnostic test results, inpatient and outpatient notes, operative notes, discharge summaries, follow-up reports, patient photographs, medical drawings, graphs, and treatment-related correspondence.

Since 1975, all patient records from the hospital’s specialty clinics and units are merged in a centralized record-keeping system. Prior to 1975, each specialty clinic separately maintained its own patient record system, and the hospital units maintained their own centralized patient record system.

Current and active patient records from all specialty clinics and hospital units must be available on demand. The historical records should be available to medical researchers in the hospital and its affiliated university, but these records do not require the same immediate availability as the records for the hospital’s current patients.

The Dynamic File Services Solution

Joe plans a solution that is responsive to the access needs of the healthcare users for active files and the needs of the research users for the historical files.

Historical Files

Joe creates a Dynamic File Services standard pair for each of the pre-1975 records for the specialty clinics and hospital. A policy for each pair is tailored to move the largest image files daily between 12:15 a.m and 5:30 a.m. After the large files are migrated, Joe modifies the policy to move other file types and sizes. Over time, the entire file set is migrated to the secondary location. Users are able to access the files throughout the process and afterwards without being aware of the physical location of the data.

Relocating the historical files helps free needed space on the primary storage location to allow for the growth of current and active medical records, which have a higher frequency of use and higher performance requirements. Both old and current medical records are easily available to users via a merged view of the files.

Active Files

Joe studies the current centralized patient record system to understand the types of files and their usage. Working with the medical staff, he determines that the image files that are more than a year old can be moved to a secondary storage location. He creates a Dynamic File Services standard pair where the secondary location is used to store the less frequently accessed images.

Joe creates a policy that moves images to the secondary location if they have not been modified in more than one year. Initially, the policy runs daily in non-peak hours between 1:00 a.m. and 4:00 a.m. After the desired files have been relocated, Joe modifies the policy to run monthly.

Relocating the images helps free more space for the primary storage area. The reduced size of the data on the primary location helps shorten the needed backup window for weekly and incremental backups. The secondary storage area can use less expensive storage and be backed up monthly after the policy run. The users are able to access files throughout the migration process and are not aware of the physical location of the files.

1.2.3 Social Networks: Collaboration Applications

Hiroko works for an international marketing firm that provides employees a dynamic collaboration environment. She needs to manage the growing storage needs without disrupting the collaborative environment.

Understanding the Data

The company uses a collaboration application that allows team workspaces to be created dynamically as teams are formed to work on a variety of marketing projects. Users upload documents and images to their team sites for projects. The files are stored as unstructured data in the application’s file repository.

The Dynamic File Services Solution

Hiroko studies the collaboration application’s unstructured file repositories to understand the types of files and where the application stores them. She creates a Dynamic File Services standard pair where the primary path is the folder for the application’s image file repository. She modifies the application to access the files via a network share so that the application accesses the files via a merged view of the files in the pair.

Hiroko creates a policy that moves image files to the secondary location. Thumbnail images for the files remain on the primary location. Initially, the policy runs daily in non-peak hours between 1:00 a.m. and 4:00 a.m. After most of the images have been moved, Hiroko modifies the policy to run weekly during non-peak hours.

The application accesses the files via the merged view and presents the view to users. When a user clicks a thumbnail image to open the file, the file is transparently retrieved from the secondary location and displayed in the collaboration environment. The application and the users are not aware of the physical location of the data.

This Dynamic File Services solution allows Hiroko to better control the storage environment and backup requirements for the collaboration application.

Additional Information

An example of how to set up a merged view for applications is available in Section B.0, Setting Up a Merged View for Collaboration Applications: Novell Vibe OnPrem.

1.2.4 Business: Retaining Inactive Files

Samuel works for a small business. He needs to manage the growing storage needs, while retaining inactive files for administrative, fiscal, legal, or historical reasons.

Understanding the Data

The company has active records for the organization’s current functions, projects, and initiatives. Generally, active files are referred to often in the regular course of business, such as creation, distribution, and use. The files become inactive when they are no longer needed to carry out current activities. However, these files must be kept as long as required to meet the organization’s administrative, fiscal, legal, and historical requirements.

Managing inactive files is a question of space, value, and use. Generally, inactive files are no longer required to carry out the administrative or operational functions for which they were created. It is not efficient to retain the files on premium storage space. As the volume of files increases, performance suffers, and timely retrieval of active files becomes increasingly difficult and time-consuming. Routine disposition of inactive files to lower-cost storage is a cost-effective solution to file bloat.

The Dynamic File Services Solution

Samuel studies the organization’s data to understand the types of files and their usage. Working with managers, he determines what files need to be retained and when they are considered inactive. He creates a Dynamic File Services retention pair where the secondary location is used store inactive files in a retention repository.

Samuel creates a policy that moves inactive files to the retention repository on the secondary location if they have not been modified in more than one year. The policy runs monthly on the last day of the month, during non-peak hours. Users see the files disappear from their file space.

Samuel sets up reviewers for the retained data. He schedules a review reminder to be sent to reviewers on the first day of each month. Reviewers can access the retention repository via the Dynamic File Services Retention Review Web tool. The tool allows them to review all files that were moved during a policy run. They can delete a file from the repository (which purges it from storage), restore a file to its original location on the primary storage (which removes it from the repository), or leave a file in the repository for later consideration.

Relocating the inactive files helps free more space for the primary storage area, which improves performance for the users. The reduced size of the data on the primary location helps shorten the needed backup window for weekly and incremental backups.

This Dynamic File Services solution allows Samuel to better control the storage environment and backup requirements for the active data. It allows files to be retained in a secure data retention repository where they can be reviewed periodically by designated reviewers to determine when inactive files are no longer needed and can be purged. Or, if a file needs to be returned to the active data, it can be restored to its original file location on the primary storage.