How to get reports on FileFly usage

The Gather Statistics operation is a helpful FileFly policy for several uses:

• to analyze the current effectiveness of a FileFly installation on the data set

• to evaluate a source before creating a migration rule

• to measure the total amount of data under management within FileFly

• to report statistics DataCore Support requests so they can calculate the usable licenses needed for an upgrade to FileFly 3.0, which has a new licensing model

Below is an example of how to create a report that measures the total amount of data managed on all sources.

To create a Gather Statistics policy

A FileFly Gather statistics policy requires a list of sources and, optionally, a rule-set, if pretesting the effectiveness of a new rule is desired.

1. Open the Admin portal on the FileFly Administrative server, and navigate to the Sources tab to see all available sources:
   
   

   Open

   

2. Open the Policies tab and select Create Policy:
   
   

   Open

   

3. Provide the policy a recognizable name, and for the Operation, select Gather Statistics.
   
   

4. Additional definition options appear once selected. Four sources are available:
   
   

5. Select some or all (using the Shift key) and select Add.
   
   

6. Click Save when all sources are added.

7. The policy needs a task to run it so open the Tasks tab and select Create Task.
   
   

8. Provide the new task a name and select the Gather Statistics policy created:
   
   

9. Skip setting a schedule or email notification (because this task runs on demand), and select Save.
   
   

10. The new task appears in the Tasks list:
    
    

11. Select the task to open the Task Details, and select Run Now.
    
    

12. The portal returns to the Overview tab, where the task progress displays. Note: there are four runs, one for each source:
    
    

13. Navigate to Tasks > View last Stats and select the Gather stats policy task from the Task drop-down list to get a copy of the report:
    
    

14. Clicking the blue source name opens a new tab (or window, depending on browser) and display the statistics of that selected source:
    
    

15. Scroll down for further breakdowns, such as the file types on the source and the number of files, to analyze for planning. Migrating has little effect on users in this example because 98% of the data on this volume has not been modified in two years.

16. Either print the page to PDF or save the web page completely to preserve the report output. Save as PDF is a print option in Chrome:
    
    

    
    
    

    • Save the file to a location readily available.

    • Save the file with a name that identifies the source it ran against. Each report contains one source, so it is important to differentiate reports.

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