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Refer to these instructions during initial deployment and when adding new components. For upgrade instructions, please refer to 8 instead.
For further details and usage instructions for each platform, refer to 4.
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In addition to the components described above, it may also be necessary to install one or more Config Tools. Full details are provided where required for each storage platform in 4.
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Once the software has been installed, the first step in any new Caringo deployment is to analyze the characteristics of the primary storage volumes. The following steps describe how to generate file statistics reports for each volume.
In the FileFly Admin Portal web interface (see 5 for full documentation):
- Create Sources for each volume to analyze
- Create a 'Gather Statistics' Policy and select all defined Sources
- Create a Task for the 'Gather Statistics' Policy
- On the 'Overview' tab, click Quick Run
- Click on the Task's name to run it immediately
- When the Task has finished, expand the details by clicking on the Task name under 'Recent Task History'
- Click Go to Task to go to the 'Task Details' page
- Access the report by clicking on View Last Stats
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- Prepare a destination for migrated files – see 4
- Create a Destination in FileFly Admin Portal
- Create a Rule and a Migration Policy
- A typical rule might limit migrations to files modified more than six months ago – do not use an 'all files' rule
- To avoid unnecessary migration of active files, be conservative with your first Migration Policy
- Create a Task for the new Policy
- For now, disable the schedule
- Save the task, then click on its name to open the 'Task Details' page
- Click Simulate Now to run a Task simulation
- Examine the resultant reports (view the Task and click View Last Stats)
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3 describes all FileFly Policy Operations in detail and will help you to get the most out of FileFly.
The remainder of this chapter gives guidance on using FileFly in a production environment.
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Refer to 6 for details of how to backup FileFly configuration.
Next, be sure to test that your backup and restore software respects stubs appropriately. Specifically:
- Review the backup and restore procedures described in 7
- Check backup software can backup stubs without triggering demigration
- Check backup software restores stubs and that they can be demigrated
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For further information on plaform-specific interoperability considerations, please refer to the appropriates sections of 4.
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This chapter describes the various operations that may be performed on selected files by FileFly Admin Portal policies when using a Community Edition license.
User interface operation is further detailed in 5.
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Windows Shadow Copy – also known as Volume Snapshot Service (VSS) – allows previous versions of files to be restored, e.g. from Windows Explorer. This mechanism cannot be used to restore a stub. Restore stubs from backup instead – see 7.
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On Windows, the FileFly Agent can monitor stub deletions to identify secondary storage files that are no longer referenced in order to maximize the usefulness of Scrub Policies. This feature extends not only to stubs that are directly deleted by the user, but also to other cases of stub file destruction such as overwriting a stub or renaming a different file over the top of a stub.
Stub Deletion Monitoring is disabled by default. To enable it, please refer to 12.2.
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After an entire volume containing stubs is restored from snapshot, a Post-Restore Revalidate Policy must be run, as per the restore procedure described in 7.
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IMPORTANT: Until the demigration above is performed, the restored stub(s) may occupy space for the full size of the file.
As with any other FileFly restore procedure, be sure to run a Post-Restore Revalidate Policy across the volume before the next Scrub – see 7.
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The Swarm storage node port (TCP port 80 by default) must be allowed by any firewalls between the Caringo FileFly Swarm Plugin on the Caringo FileFly Gateway and the Swarm storage nodes. For further information regarding firewall configuration see 9.
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The TCP port used to access the CloudScaler Gateway via HTTP or HTTPS (possibly by way of a load-balancer) must be allowed by any firewalls between the FileFly CloudScaler Plugin on the FileFly Gateway and the CloudScaler Gateway endpoints. For further information regarding firewall configuration see 9.
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The 'Configure' button on the 'Server Details' page may be used to push configuration changes to FileFly Agents as described in 12.
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The system upgrade feature allows for remote servers to be updated automatically with minimal downtime. Click Upgrade Servers to begin the System Upgrade process – see 8 for further details.
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Note: To exclude a directory from being actioned use a Rule. See 10.
Tip: On the 'Overview' tab, click on the Create Source 'Quick Link' to go directly to the 'Create Source' page.
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Wildcard patterns ending with '/**' match all files in a particular tree. When this kind of pattern is used to exclude directory trees, FileFly will automatically omit traversal of these trees entirely. For large excluded trees, this can save considerable time.
For other types of file and directory exclusion, please refer to 10.
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- From the 'Policies' tab, click Create Policy. The 'Create Policy' page will be displayed
- Name the Policy and optionally enter a comment
- Select the operation to perform for this Policy – see 3
- For Policies with Rules, a file must match ALL selected Rules for the operation to be performed
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Please read the text carefully and set the minimum grace period as appropriate and after consulting with your backup plan. It is strongly recommended to review this setting following changes to your backup plan. For example, if backups are kept for 30 days, the grace period should be at least 35 days (allowing 5 days for restoration). See also 7.
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This chapter describes how to backup Caringo FileFly configuration (for primary and secondary storage backup considerations, see 7).
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Most enterprise Windows backup software will respect the Offline flag. Refer to the backup software user guide for options regarding Offline files.
When testing backup software configuration, test that backup of stubs does not cause unwanted demigration.
Additional backup testing may be required if Stub Deletion Monitoring is required. Please refer to 12.2 for more details.
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Location: C:\Program Files\Caringo FileFly\logs\FileFly Agent
There are two types of FileFly Agent log file. The agent.log contains all FileFly Agent messages, including startup, shutdown, and error information, as well as details of each individual file operation (migrate, demigrate, etc.). Use this log to determine which operations have been performed on which files and to check any errors that may have occurred.
The messages.log contains a subset of the FileFly Agent messages, related to startup, shutdown, critical events and system-wide notifications. This log is often most useful to troubleshoot configuration issues.
Log messages in both logs are prefixed with a timestamp and thread tag. The thread tag (e.g. <A123>) can be used to distinguish messages from concurrent threads of activity.
Log files are regularly rotated to keep the size of individual log files manageable. Old rotations are compressed as gzip (.gz) files, and can be read using many common tools such as 7-zip, WinZip, or zless. To adjust logging parameters, including how much storage to allow for log files before removing old rotations, see 12.3.
Log information for operations performed as the result of an Admin Portal Policy will also be available via the web interface.
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