HP P4000 G2 manual Single Instance Storage

NOTE:

You must have a VDS Hardware Provider that is appropriate for your storage system installed in order to provision storage on an iSCSI target. If you have Microsoft iSCSI Software Target running on a Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 storage system, install the Microsoft iSCSI Software Target VDS Hardware Provider on the client computer.

•Provision a Shared Folder Wizard for creating and configuring shared folders that can be accessed by using either the server message block (SMB) or NFS protocol.

•Single Instance Storage (SIS) can be enabled or disabled for each volume that is displayed in Share and Storage Management. SIS recovers disk space by reducing the amount of redundant data stored on a volume. It identifies identical files, storing only a single copy of the file in the SIS Common Store, and replacing the files with pointers to the file in the SIS Common Store.

The Share and Storage Management snap-in makes it possible to complete most of the administrative tasks that are required to create and manage shared folders and volumes without having to use the Shared Folder Management, Storage Manager for SANs, or Disk Management snap-ins. These tasks include configuring quotas to restrict the quantity of data, configuring file screening to prevent certain file types or only allowing certain file types defined by the administrator, and enabling indexing.

For more information, see the Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Help.

Single Instance Storage

The Single Instance Storage (SIS) feature reduces the amount of space that is used to store data on a volume. SIS does this by replacing duplicate files with logical links that point to a single copy of the file in the SIS Common Store, which is a hidden folder that is located in the root directory of the volume.

SIS consists of two primary components that together maintain a database of file signatures. These components include:

•Groveler service - The Groveler service scans the hard-disk volumes on a server for duplicate copies of files. If the service locates duplicate copies of files, the information about the duplicates is sent to the Single Instance Storage Filter. The Groveler service runs as a user-level service.

•Single Instance Storage Filter - The Single Instance Storage Filter is a file system filter service that manages duplicate copies of files on hard-disk volumes. When notified by the Groveler service of duplicate copies of files, this component copies one instance of a duplicate file into a central folder. The duplicate is then replaced by a link (a reparse point) to the central copy. The link file contains information about the original file, such as its current location, size, and attributes. The Single Instance Storage Filter runs in kernel mode.

The Single Instance Storage Filter service cannot be stopped. If this service is disabled, the linked files are not accessible. If the central folder is deleted, the linked files can become permanently inaccessible. If you stop the Groveler service, the files cannot be automatically linked, but the existing linked files can still be accessible.

You can enable SIS on a maximum of 20 volumes per computer. SIS cannot act upon any files that are referenced through junction points, and it cannot be used with any file system except the NTFS file system. SIS will not process files that are 32 kilobytes or less in size.

If you need to access data that is stored on a SIS volume, which might be required for backup and recovery operations, you must either run or have installed Single Instance Storage Filter on your computer.

Backup and recovery by using SIS has the following requirements:

52 Administration tools