D Advanced FileFly Agent Configuration

D.1 Logging and Debug Options

Log location and rotation options may be adjusted if required. Debug mode may impact performance and should only be enabled following advice from Caringo Support.

Windows FileFly Agent Configuration

The Caringo FileFly Agent service may be configured as follows:

• From the Start Menu, open the Configure Caringo FileFly Agent tool
• Adjust settings
• Click Set

FileFly NetApp FPolicy Server Configuration

A FileFly NetApp FPolicy Server may be configured as follows:

• From the Start Menu, open the Configure Caringo FileFly NetApp FPolicy Server tool
• Adjust settings
• Click Set

D.2 FileFly Agent Configuration File

Many configuration options in this appendix are set in the ff_agent.cfg configuration file. This file must be created in the Caringo FileFly Agent configuration directory:

• Windows: C:\Program Files\Caringo FileFly\data\FileFly Agent\

Syntax rules for the ff_agent.cfg contents are as follows:

• ff_agent.cfg must be saved as UTF-8 or ASCII (not Unicode)
• Backslashes must be escaped. e.g. \ will be \\

Note: Changes to ff_agent.cfg require the Caringo FileFly Agent service to be restarted to take effect.

D.3 Syslog Configuration

FileFly^TM can be configured to send UDP syslog messages in addition to the standard file-based logging functionality. To enable syslog for FileFly Agent, ensure that the line “Syslog.enabled=true” appears in the ff_agent.cfg configuration file (see §D.2).

Optional syslog configuration parameters are detailed below.

Note: The ff_agent.cfg file configuration must be performed for each FileFly Agent. To configure syslog on all servers add the ff_agent.cfg to all FileFly Agent installations.

Syslog configuration parameters

Format

To set the standard to which syslog messages will be compliant, use:

Syslog.format=<format>

Where <format> is either rfc5424 or rfc3164. Refer to the documentation for the particular syslog collector when deciding which format to use.

For example:

Syslog.format=rfc5424

Facility

To set the facility with which syslog messages will be sent, use:

Syslog.facility=<facility>

Where <facility> is a facility name (local0 to local7 inclusive). Alternatively, specify a facility number as per the syslog documentation.

For example:

Syslog.facility=local1

Target

To set the target to which syslog messages will be sent, use:

Syslog.targetHost=<hostname (preferred) or IP> and

Syslog.targetPort=<port>

For example:

Syslog.targetHost=mycollector.example.com

Syslog.targetPort=10514

Message Suppression

To set a minimum severity level below which messages will be suppressed, use:

Syslog.severityThreshold=<severity> Where severity is:

For example:

Syslog.severityThreshold=error

Keep-Alive

By default, a debug-level message is sent periodically (regardless of the severity threshold) to confirm that the service is still alive and to keep ARP entries fresh to avoid UDP packet loss. Normally such messages would be filtered out by the receiver.

To disable keep-alive messages (not recommended), use:

Syslog.keepalive=false

Syslog configuration defaults

The default configuration for the syslog is enumerated below:

Name Default

format rfc3164

facility local0

targetHost 255.255.255.255

targetPort 514

severityThreshold notice

keepalive true

D.4 Stub Deletion Monitoring

As described in §4.2.7, on Windows file systems, FileFly can monitor stub deletion events in order to make corresponding secondary storage files eligible for removal using Scrub Policies. This feature is not enabled by default. While most enterprise backup products generally use some kind of archive format, some basic backup products simply copy files/stubs as-is to another volume or disk image file (e.g., VHDX file). When using such copy-based backup software, when copies are deleted or overwritten by later runs of the backup job, secondary storage files may be marked as scrubbable. If a Scrub Policy is run at a later date, file data may be removed that is still required by the original stubs on primary storage.

Stub Deletion Monitoring can be configured on a per agent basis via the ff_agent.cfg configuration file (see §D.2) by adding the following parameter:

Windows.StubDeleteMonitoring.ProcessEvents= boolean 

Set to true to enable Stub Deletion Monitoring (default: false).

D.5 Parallelization Tuning Parameters

When a Policy is executed on a Source, operations will automatically be executed in parallel.

In the case that the default parallelization parameters are inappropriate for a given agent, they can be adjusted via the ff_agent.cfg configuration file (see §D.2). The configuration must be performed on a per agent basis and will apply to operations performed by that agent. Different agents may be tuned individually as appropriate, provided that nodes within the same cluster are configured identically.

Parameters

• Agent.Server.MaxAsyncSlotsPerConnection= integer
• The maximum number of operations that may be performed in parallel on behalf of a single policy for a given Source (default: 8)
• Agent.Server.AsyncWorkerThreadCount= integer
• The total number of operations that may be performed in parallel across all policies on this agent (default: 32)
• This does not limit the number of policies which may be run in parallel, operations will simply be queued if necessary

Important: take care if adjusting these parameters – over-parallelization may result in lower throughput.

D.6 Demigration Blocking

Applications may be denied the right to demigrate files via the ff_agent.cfg configuration file (see §D.2). An application specified in ff_agent.cfg will be unable to access a stub and demigrate the file contents (an error will be returned to the application instead).

The ff_agent.cfg file configuration must be performed for each FileFly Agent and will only apply to files on the same server as the FileFly Agent. To deny demigration rights on all servers add the ff_agent.cfg to all FileFly Agent installations.

Note: Only local applications (applications running directly on the file server) may be blocked.

Windows

Configuration file:

C:\Program Files\Caringo FileFly\data\FileFly Agent\ff_agent.cfg

To specify an application by filename use:

Demigration.DenyWindowsApplicationNames=<app_name>

For example:

Demigration.DenyWindowsApplicationNames=app.exe, app_2.exe

NetApp Filers

Demigration blocking cannot be supported for NetApp Filers.