HP StorageWorks File Migration Agent V2.1 administrator guide (T4274-96105, October 2006)

20 Product information
sparse file and the file’s data contains zero bytes. The link to the file’s data in the backend datastore is kept
in the extended attributes of the file. In addition, a stubfile is marked “offline” (offline flag is set).
Volume Policy
A set of watermarks and retention periods that determine the automatic release strategy.
Key features
FMA in this version supports the following features:
• FMA supports policy-based migration of files on criteria such as file age, file size, or file name. Based
on the policies, FMA will automatically trigger migrations to archives at user-scheduled intervals. It is
possible to exclude files from migration.
• FMA supports storage space monitoring. Based on configurable watermarks and retention time
periods, files that have previously been migrated to an archive will be released from the managed
volume and replaced by a stub file, through which the archived file may still be accessed seamlessly by
the user or an application.
• FMA supports automatic recalls from the archive locations when files are accessed and sets the
directory displays to the correct file sizes.
• Metadata can be backed up with any backup application that supports offline files. The application
must open the files with the FILE_FLAG_OPEN_NO_RECALL option. For details about backup
applications qualified with FMA, see ”Backup/restore” on page 142 which discusses Third-party
product compatibility.
• FMA supports multiple target archives where the data is migrated to. Currently the maximum number of
archives per system is 10. This means that for each file 10 copies in different archives can be managed.
• By using multiple target archives, an automatic failover for recalls is implemented. If a file cannot be
recalled from the first archive, FMA tries the next archive location and so on. This will cause automatic
failover if archives are temporarily unavailable during recalls.
• Data will be recalled immediately by FMA when a user or application accesses a stubfile.
• FMA supports recall operations on secondary archive locations should the primary archive be
inaccessible. The replication to the secondary archive must be handled outside of FMA via some
replications mechanism such as RISS replication.
• FMA is fully integrated into the management console (‘Computer Management’) of the Windows
system. All definition of archives, managed volumes, and file policies are done via an FMA
management console plug-in.
• FMA includes a Windows File Explorer plug-in for migrating, recalling, and releasing files as well as
displaying FMA metadata.
Benefits
• Transparent access to released files for users and applications without administrator intervention.
• Lowering the total cost of ownership of mission-critical data by easily increasing storage space without
creating new network shares and volumes, which require further administrative effort not least because
of relocating files to newly deployed storage.
• Lowering TCO by migrating inactive data to less-expensive storage media.
• Less administration through automatic data management based on administrator-defined policies and
storage space monitoring.
• Deployment of a fault-tolerant environment.
• Less investment in file servers and storage capacity.
• Reduction of storage management costs by reducing the daily backup volume due to only backing up
the metadata for inactive files.
• Minimizing downtime after a disaster recovery by restoring only production files in full and only the
metadata for released files.
• Easy installation and configuration.