Here is the transcript from the Live Q&A session Chris Geier and I conducted with Microsoft at Noon EDT today:
Q: Is your storage solution in the cloud, onsite or both?
A: Both. We offer adapters/connectors for both on-premise (i.e. EMC Centera) and clound-based (i.e. Windows Azure) storage platforms.
Q: How does StoragePoint reduce the size of SharePoint databases?
A: By offloading the content BLOBs normally stored in the content databases using SharePoint EBS or SQL RBS interfaces.
Q: If I use StoragePoint to offload BLOBs and then I find that I need to restore from a backup, is it possible that my SharePoint server will get confused. For example, I restore a document item from the DB and it contains old info about where the BLOB is stored.
A: No, StoragePoint handles this scenario using our breadcrumb feature. Any time a BLOB is moved we leave a breadcrumb behind that points to the new location.
Q: Can I setup archive rules for certain pieces of content to move them to different storage locations?
A: Yes. You can setup aging, retained version, and metadata change rules to move content to another endpoint, the idea being that I`m continually moving BLOBs to less expensive tiers of storage as it becomes less relevant.
Q: Does this integrate cleanly with SharePoints "search" functionality to allow quick search of BLOB assets?
A: Yes, the overall user/SharePoint experience is identical for all perspectives including Search. You will find that the speed of crawl and indexing is actually much faster. Which is a common reason why StoragePoint is a consderation for many of our customers.
Q: are there decision criteria for using RBS over EBS. Assuming you can use either one? or both?
A: EBS is deprecated (...still supported) in SharePoint 2010, so we would recommend RBS if this is a clean install on 2010. If you are migration from WSS3/MOSS 2007 with StoragePoint in place, you can upgrade with EBS and then migrate to RBS at your leisure.
Q: How are you positioning StoragePoint against the free RBS FileStream provider that comes with RBS?
A: The RBS FILESTREAM provider does not come with RBS...it is a separate download. We don`t really position ourselves against it per se because it`s not a comparable offering. It is a very limited BLOB offloading capability that has all kinds of limitations. Here`s a blog post with more details: http://blog.storagepoint.com/post.aspx?id=280174ab-f0ce-4348-aabb-2081630484c9
Q: How would your product affect our SharePoint replication strategy?
A: That is an important consideration when selecting a BLOB externalization product. You have to be sure that the BLOB reference that is left in place of the BLOB itself does not point to a hard location thus making taking advantage of replication more difficult. In the case of StoragePoint we store a reference to what we call the Storage Profile. In your replicated Farm all you would have to do is modify the location that the storage profile points to and that replicated farm would be fully functional. Here`s a blog post with more details: http://blog.storagepoint.com/post.aspx?id=57eb05cb-d0ff-4f71-b2f1-dd360999ebef
Q: Do you have an ROI calcuator or other metrics I can share at my company to sell adoption internally?
A: We do have a tiered storage ROI calculator on our site: http://www.storagepoint.com/roicalculator.aspx. You can also download our BLOBulator, which well estimate how much smaller your content databases will be with StoragePoint in place: http://www.storagepoint.com/product.aspx?tab=6
Q: What`s the difference betwee RBS FileStream and StoragePoint?
A: RBS FILESTREAM is a very basic RBS provider that uses the built-in FILESTREAM capabilities of SQL 2008. It`s biggest limitation is it`s requirement that the BLOB store be local to the SQL server. More on positioning in this blog post: http://blog.storagepoint.com/post.aspx?id=280174ab-f0ce-4348-aabb-2081630484c9.
Q: I`ve read blog articles about configuring RBS. Which of the configuration steps do I still need to do in order to use RBS with StoragePoint?
A: None. StoragePoint handles all the RBS configuration tasks under the covers when you create a storage profile.
Q: What if I need to use compliant storage like EMC Centera?
A: We have two adapters that support ECM Centera...one that uses the traditional RPC layer and a 2nd that uses SNIA`s XAM standard.
Q: How often do you upgrade your solution? Is it in cadence with Microsoft`s releases?
A: We work to have 2 major releases per year, and service packs as needed. We strive to continually add features and functionality to our product. Some of this is based on customer and partner feedback and others based on being able to take advantage of new Microsoft functionality such as that in SharePoint 2010.
Q: What`s the differece between StoragePoint archiving and other archiving solutions?
A: Probably the biggest difference is our use of EBS and RBS as the BLOB remoting mechanism. Most of the traditional archiving solutions use some sort of stub or HTML placeholder after they pull the BLOB out of the database, so the end user experience is affected and OOB and 3rd party functionality is effected (i.e. doing a SPFile.OpenBinaryStream would grab the stub, not the BLOB).
Q: What`s the impact to SharePoint performance after StoragePoint is installed?
A: This is a YMMV type question, so I will never answer it in absolutes, but I will say that you can expect performance to be as good or slighter better than leaving the BLOBs in the database. If the BLOB stores are on high performant storage and close to the WFEs you can expect significanty better performance, especially on larger files and with bulk operations (i.e. crawling content).
Q: Is my Backup strategy different when I use StoragePoint?
A: I would say your backup strategy "MAY" be different. However this is because you now have more options at your disposal when planning out your strategy, for example, you will have significanly smaller databases which now makes SQL replication more appealing. The only different step that needs to be added is the consideration of where your BLOB`s are and how they are accounted for in the backup and restore. We are working on a whitepaper that addresses all your backup restore and Disaster recovery needs. This should be published soon.
Q: I read the blogs... are you saying the StoragePoint will place content on a new tier of storage automatically once it reaches a certain level (ala 95pct)?
A: You can configure multiple endpoints (blob store locations) per profile, so you can configure endpoints to be taken offline as they reach some freespace threshold. At that point, the next configured endpoint would be used...and so on.
Q: Can I pick a specific list(s) to be externalized with StoragePoint and RBS?
A: Yes, you can get as granual as specific lists, or you can also specify content types, sites, or even externalize based on changes in Metadata.
Q: Our company has 50TBs of content- what chellenges does that create with StoragePoint?
A: I don`t see challenges here, I see opportunities. If you follow Microsoft sizing recommendations for content dbs (...and I`ll be the 1st to say this is a GUIDELINE and not an absolute) you would need 500 content dbs to manage that much content. If you assume a modest BLOB offloading yield of 90pct you would only need 50, but again the 100GB recommendation is soft and has been increased to 300GB in 2010. Database size aside, the storage cost savings is probably the single biggest benefit here. You could easily save $1m on storage costs by offloading 90pct of the data to a secondary tier of storage.
Q: Will having StoragePoint in my 2007 affect my upgrade to 2010
A: Yes, but the affect will be a positive one. We have found that because the database is not bogged down with BLOB`s that the actual upgrade process is much quicker. A primary reason for this is that the table structure for BLOB storage changes from 2007 to 2010. As such all BLOB`s need to be re-organized during the upgrade. This can be a time consuming process. Without the BLOB`s in the database this process is significantly faster.
Q: In your Blog you refer to "intelligent archiving" what do you mean by this?
A: Our archiving capability is intelligent in the sense that StoragePoint makes decisions based on the rules you defined...no user or admin interaction is required to archive content once the rules are established. Frankly, the "intelligent archiving" tag is more marketing spin than anything else...I would refer to it as "active archiving" more than anything else. Traditional archiving solutions are more passive in how they archive content.
Q: If I pick a specific list with content to externalize with StoragePoint and RBS - what happens to the rest of the blobs (from other lists\sites) in that database?
A: If the storage profile is using EBS and no other endpoints are configured or valid it will go into the content db. If the storage profile is using RBS you will be required to provide at least one unfiltered endpoint for BLOBs to go into in the case they don`t meet the criteria of a filtered endpoint.
Feel free to contact us via our general info box (...noted below) or myself (rdoria@metalogix.net) or chris (cgeier@metalogix.net) directly or post a comment below if you missed the session and have questions.
StoragePoint 3.0 Information
- Contact us at info@storagepoint.com if you have any questions or would like to request access to the Release Candidate. We will not issue pre-release trials without full corporate contact information (Name, Title, Company, Address, Phone Number, and Email Address).
- Attend one of our weekly StoragePoint 3.0 Overview sessions.
- Follow us on Twitter for updates on new content (videos, whitepapers, blogs, etc.).
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- Check storagepoint.com on June 14th for our new site.
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