KB180981970: WebCenter - How to split the FileStore over multiple shares

Description

In WebCenter 16, it is possible to split off Document thumbnails and Document version perspectives into separate folder structures, to address the issue of the FileStore becoming too large, making it harder to backup and maintain. With this change in place, old Document folders will no longer need to be frequently scanned as the only changes will be files cleaned out by the Clean-up tool. The configuration of the different FileStore paths is stored within appconfig.xml. A mechanism is in place to also retain these values during a WebCenter upgrade. In case the same FileStore UNC path is maintained, the Installer reloads previous values when the Application Server is re-installed.

Procedure

Following FileStore paths can be set in appconfig.xml since WebCenter 16.0:

• viewer_data_dir - The folder used to store 2D Viewer data files for individual viewable WebCenter Documents. This node is present in the default version of appconfig.xml and only gets updated during the installation with a custom value – or is kept to the default value if no custom value was set.
• document_thumbnails_dir - The folder used to store thumbnail files for Documents that support having custom thumbnails generated per Document WebCenter object. Its presence in appconfig.xml is optional. If it is missing, Document Thumbnails are stored in the same folder as the main Document files (as set in Document_dir node).
• document_perspectives_dir - The folder used to store various default and custom Document Perspective files for individual Documents (set of supported Perspective types varies based on the Document Type). Its presence in appconfig.xml is optional. If it is missing, Document Perspectives are stored in the same folder as the main Document files (as set in Document_dir node).

How to: Move Document thumbnails to a separate share

1. Open \\Artios\WebCenter\Config\appconfig.xml in a text editor such as Notepad++.

2. Add a new element <document_thumbnails_dir>, containing the new UNC path under the main Filestore root. Example: 

   <document_thumbnails_dir value=”\\MyFileServer\\Filestore\\docthumbnails”></document_thumbnails_dir>

   Only a single UNC path is supported. It is important that the path is not moved to a different share as this will break the automated migration. Avoid changing other fields in this XML file as such manual updates in general are considered unsupported.

3. Make sure to disable Search crawling upon server startup.

4. Restart the Application Server. 

   Upon starting, the Document thumbnails will be moved to a folder structure under the new root. This will take some time if there are many Documents in the system, but since all Document operations are moved within the same share, it should not take hours.

5. If needed, for example, to move Document thumbnails to a faster SSD drive for better performance, it is possible to now copy the thumbnails folder to a different share.

   1. Copy the new docthumbnails folder to the alternate share. 

      This can be a time consuming operation so for production it should be scheduled (as a copy with later delete of the source) to run at low usage hours to not interfere with server performance. We have good experience from using RoboCopy for this kind of large scale copy operations. It should be ensured that the correct access rights are set up on the new share (same effective rights as current folder).

   2. Edit \\Artios\WebCenter\Config\appconfig.xml to reconfigure WebCenter to use the new share. The element <document_thumbnails_dir> contains the new UNC path under the alternate Filestore root. Example (same server, but different share):

      <document_thumbnails_dir value=”\\MyFileServer\\Filestore2\\docthumbnails”></document_thumbnails_dir>

6. Restart the Application Server. After a restart, WebCenter will use the new Document thumbnails folder and the old one can be removed once good working is ensured.

How to: Move Document perspectives to a separate share

1. Open \\Artios\WebCenter\Config\appconfig.xml in a text editor such as Notepad++.

2. Add a new element <document_perspectives_dir>, containing the new UNC path under the main Filestore root. Example: 

   <document_perspectives_dir value=”\\MyFileServer\\Filestore\\perspectives” ></document_perspectives_dir>

   Only a single UNC path is supported. It is important that the path is not moved to a different share as this will break the automated migration. Avoid changing other fields in this XML file as such manual updates in general are considered unsupported.

3. Make sure to disable Search crawling upon server startup.

4. Restart the Application Server. 

   Upon starting, the Document perspectives will be moved to a folder structure under the new root. This will take some time if there are many Documents in the system, but since all Document operations are moved within the same share, it should not take hours.

5. If needed, for example, to move Document perspectives to a faster SSD drive for better performance, it is possible to now copy the perspectives folder to a different share.

   1. Copy the new perspectives folder to the alternate share. 

      This can be a time consuming operation so for production it should be scheduled (as a copy with later delete of the source) to run at low usage hours to not interfere with server performance. We have good experience from using RoboCopy for this kind of large scale copy operations. It should be ensured that the correct access rights are set up on the new share (same effective rights as current folder).

   2. Edit \\Artios\WebCenter\Config\appconfig.xml to reconfigure WebCenter to use the new share. The element <document_perspectives_dir> contains the new UNC path under the alternate Filestore root. Example (same server, but different share):

      <document_perspectives_dir value=”\\MySecondFileServer\Filestore2\perspectives”></document_perspectives_dir>

6. Restart the Application Server. After a restart, WebCenter will use the new Document perspectives folder and the old one can be removed once good working is ensured.