BusinessObjects Board

Filestore size grows - Strategy to reduce it -

We have BOXI 3.0 on Windows 2003 / Apache TomCAT, repository on Oracle 10.

we have about 1000 users, 80 univers and 1500 reports (deski and webi)

Recently, checking the filestore size, i saw it reached about 13 GB ! :shock:

Making a quick analyse of it, I saw the disk space taken was divided on this way :

.REP : 470
.WID : 1146
.RPT : 19
.PDF : 33653
.XLS : 6456
.TXT : 55

Then, we see agnostics documents represent a very huge part of the repository size and I canā€™t explain why this kind of files are stored in it while the publications who generates it in our company put it on a network drive !

It is like for each PDF or XLS generated outside BO, the BO system would keep a copy in the filestore !!!

Have you noticed such thing ? how did you manage it ? Do you know how if it is a bug, how to reduce it ? I have read in forum the ā€˜-pruneā€™ stuff to delete empty folders in the filestore but I dare it would not be enoughā€¦

Thank you in advance for your inputs on this subject.


bernard timbal :fr: (BOB member since 2003-05-26)

Maybe set the instances to delete, as you donā€™t want them there anyway?


Mak 1 :uk: (BOB member since 2005-01-06)

Bernard,

if you use the utility here you will be able to see the sizes of the documents in the repository.

Regards

HRS


Sushir Patel :uk: (BOB member since 2006-04-19)

Yes HRS, thank you for your input but I am already able to estimate the size of the documents in the repository. Now, my question was, why all this agnostics files are stored in the FRS while I want them only to be generated otside, and how to purge it


bernard timbal :fr: (BOB member since 2003-05-26)

Bernard,

As I said earlier, are these not just instances, can you not just set them to delete when they get to a certain number in the CMC?

Maybe Iā€™m missing something, do publications not generate instances?


Mak 1 :uk: (BOB member since 2005-01-06)

are you speaking about the limits feature ?


bernard timbal :fr: (BOB member since 2003-05-26)

Yep :).

I was unsure whether they are instances or not.
If they are I thought you could stop them ocurring in the first place.

Can you see them in the CMC, maybe you are creating an instance as well as a publication?

Or are you just writing them to an external drive rather than publishing per se?


Mak 1 :uk: (BOB member since 2005-01-06)

in attachment some typical settings of such publication and you can seee than i only want to be saved in the drive and if we consult the history and query the CMS, we see that PDF are also stored inside the FRS
BOXI_30_FRS_Grows.doc (79.0 KB)


bernard timbal :fr: (BOB member since 2003-05-26)

Well, then surely cleaning up the history, i.e. deleting the instances would work?

I understand that you havenā€™t asked it to create an instance on BOXI, but maybe thats just how it works by default?


Mak 1 :uk: (BOB member since 2005-01-06)

My observation has been that no matter what you do in Business Objects, it creates an instance within Business Objects (i.e. the FileStore) unless you tell it not to.

There are a couple of ways you can handle this.

  1. Set up limits on the number of instances that are retained. You can either do this by number of instances or by time. Which you choose depends on your data and how long it is valid. In your case, if all of the reports write a file out to your network and that is your official document retention area, you wouldnĀ’t need to keep any instances in Business Objects. Bernard, this is the limits feature you were asking about.

  2. As Mak 1 points out, setting the clean up instances option may also work. This deletes the instance after it has been used to create the file on the network. This prevents the number of instances from accumulating. I donā€™t know exactly when this setting removes the instance but it shouldnā€™t retain the instance in the FileStore. I canā€™t remember if I have looked at this or not. Itā€™s an option we donā€™t use.

The ā€œdelete instance after scheduled runā€ option is a bit flakyā€¦or perhaps works only for certain parameters. I find that even if you check that option, the instances are still retained. As long as you can see/access the instance in the ā€œhistoryā€, it is present somewhere on the filestore. Even when you schedule a report to an external drive, it still retains a copy on the filestore.

In the end we find a lot of users utlizing BO as their document archival system. We have set limits on the folders at root level, but users have option to override those. As a result some of them accumulate thousands of instances.

Apart from auditing such usage and sending alerts to errant users, there is not much we can do.


rahul :singapore: (BOB member since 2005-05-25)

So, this option does not work for you either, I have never had any problems with it?


Mak 1 :uk: (BOB member since 2005-01-06)

yes, I have been said that the delete instance after was a bit bugged in XI3.0. maybe it works better in XI 3.1 and after. if someone has testimonies regarding thisā€¦

where the

delete instance after scheduled run

can be found :blue: :blue:


bernard timbal :fr: (BOB member since 2003-05-26)