Archive for sharepoint ? Hitachi is joining the Game...

Another Player joined the game.
I don't want to go around the bush, so I will just say it. It's not ready.

Why ?

1. Broken links. How come ? its leaves a stub ( link ) to the archived file, but the link is not the same name of the file ( FILE_NAME.html )

2. You have to add an appliance, it's not only a software, so if you have a DR solution, you will have to buy two of those.

3.You can't crawl the document itself with the Moss search engine.
And some more issues. I can't find my notes from the meeting. I will update it soon.

Archive for Sharepoint ? Symantec Enterprise Vault... Round# 3

Finally. There is an archive product which is ready for archiving Moss.

Yes. They solved most of their issues. And I can proudly say that I saw this product developing progress since it early days.

Why it's ready ?
1. Supports Kerberos.
2. It is transperent to the end user. How come ? The list looks the same. The file name hasn't changed. It's only down sized to 1kb ( even less if you want to be accuarte ).
3. We can crawl it. Since they added the transperent mechanisim, the crawler just see it as regular file.
4. When you edit the file, or do any modification, or drag it to another list, it retreives it back from the repository to the list and bring it back to his original size.

Some small problems, that I still need to mention :
1. Doenst support item level premission ( but they have nice workaround ).
2. The policy mangement is not versital enough.
3. Not enough documentation. Capicity planning is not easy without it.

Archive for Sharepoint ? Symantec Enterprise Vault... Round# 2

Well, a while ago I talked about the Enterprise vault product for archiving Sharepoint platform.
Since then, The Moss 2007 is common in every single customre I have. So , now they have new version. I checked. And now I declare.

What did they fix that makes it better than their last version ?

1. It supports Kerberos authentication.

What still makes it not ready ?

1. Doesn't support fedrated shearch AKA you still cant crawl it with your Moss search engine.
2. When you want to edit an item, it's being retrieved back from the repository, but it opens the document in your temporray internet files and NOT in your web site AKA your changes wont be saved/updated ( Cause you didn't save them on your website ).
3. Permission issue. When you copy an item ( the stub ) to anoter new list with diffrent ACL - you wont be able to reach the file if you dont have an access to the source list ( read at least ).

There are more issues, but those are the most critical and I count only till three.

Sorry, But it still not ready. I better submit my customer an email.

Archive for Sharepoint ? Symantec Enterprise Vault...

You know how it is, when someone ask you a question you have never been asked before and a week later you are being asked the same question again ?

That's what happened to me today. One of my customers who still has only Sharepoint 2003 environment , wanted to try an archive product that he has for free from some vendor agreement he has.
The product is by Symantec. The name is Enterprise Vault AKA Veritas.

How it works ?

Very simple.
Application tier, DB ( sql server ) tier and Storage repository ( SAN or NAS ).

In the application tier you configure the policy ( which Sitecollection and Virtual servers you are going to archive, which files to archive and etc ).

In the DB, the application stores the location ( pointers ) of the files/item that were archived ( which is now located in the storage repository ). Yes, you the sharepoint administrator can say what the heck ? but that's the whole idea. In your sites you left with only an html link ( a stub ). When you click the item/file it goes to the Sql Server, check the pointer and retrieves the file from the storage.
Yes, The DB will shrink to a much smaller size you what it means...

What else you need to know ?
You get a webpart, for searching the files in the storage repository.
Symantec has a feature for archive in Exchange servers and it works very well ( Basically, it works in the same mechanism as Sharepoint does ).

Sounds nice, so should I go for it ?
Well, Im sorry to say but NO.
Cause this product is still not there. It has some several main issues that won't make it feasible to be deployed in any of my customers.

For example :

1. It doesn't support kerberos authentication. Only NTLM.
2. When you archive ( including the moving to the repository ), it leaves a stub which is a the "name of the file" dot HTML. Ya, You get broken links ( users who made bookmarks, links in sites and etc ).
3. The Sharepoint search engine can't crawl any of the items that were archived.