I have heard that Sharepoint could be the answer to a loosely managed, fast growing file share. I was asked to try and find a solution for a file share which currently houses millions of files, and terabytes of data using Sharepoint. I see a number of huge challenges with this exercise if we use Sharepoint, and causing many questions.
Should we import the documents into the database, should we use RBS, should the files stay on the file share and just import metadata or references? How would that happen? What type of storage, how would you set up the content databases? Would you use multiple drives? How will this effect backups? Also what is the best way to migrate 10s of millions of files?
We would probably want to eliminate duplicates, keep versions, and store meta-data for easy searching.
Does anyone have any experience, ideas or suggestions regarding this type of process being managed in Sharepoint? Are there any third party applications that make sense? Has anyone actually done something like this before.
Thanks in advance for your help.
Vikki McCormick
In my experience I have found that it is not always suitable for everything to live within SharePoint. You will more than likely need to use a mixture of File Share and SharePoint. Also with things like versioning if you were to move lots of data into a SharePoint 2010 environment you could soon find your space requirements rapidly increasing as each change to a file is saved as another copy of the file. This of course is not such a big issue for SharePoint 2013 which utilises Shredded Sotrage, where only the deltas are saved.
I would also test the various file types that you intend to move into SharePoint, just to ensure they work as expected. Your office documents will no doubt be fine and require little if no thought at all but other file types will need to be checked prior to migration. An example would be access database files. I had one instance where a customer moved everthing into SharePoint and had to move the Access databases back into the file share and have only the forms that relied on the databases stored in SharePoint. Again things are improving, so you do now get the chance to create Access database based applications with SharePoint in mind, so not so much of an issue.
With the mention of RBS storage, this could be a good candidate if you have a lot of media content, but does make for a slightly more complex recovery strategy and can leave you with limitations such as no DB Mirroring.
Hi Vikki,
It’s a difficult question to answer based on your story. My experience with replacing SharePoint for a fileshare (it’s for from an user perspective):
– Do not just import a fileshare into SharePoint
– Use META data; duhhh
– Buy a tool. I used Metalogix a lot for importing a lot of files into SharePoint
– Online? Think about the uploadtime. You can’t just upload TB’s in an afternoon
– I always call it: “What’s in it for me?”. The question needs an answer for every user, why SharePoint is better dan a fileshare… Possiblities: remote access / trashcan / working together in documents / search etc etc
– RBS; think about backup scenario’s.(it’s more difficult) I have used RBS only with big files like video’s
– Plan contentdatabases and site collections structure (broken rights etc)
– Create a great search experience for the user (with refinement)
– Navigation
It’s ‘just’ an other way of work for you users with a great impact!
The Biggest Benefits will be easy to Navigate the Content and Permissions.
The benefits i can say is versoning.. People will not to save file as V1,v2,..vn. They will have latest version on. if they want to go to older version they can get it straight away through version history.
They can share the document. they dont have to attach the file everything they need to just send the link and it will work staight away.
With the SharePoint 2013 using webapps they can co-author. So People can work on the same file at a same time and you can set the versions.Also they dont need to check in check out.
Trust me about the recovery of file. its much more easier to recover the file in SharePoint then File Share.
And Search is the BIG Plus Point Compare to File Share.
These are the few Benefits….
I will take a look at that tool. Thank you again. No worries, if I have more questions I will ask. Have a good day. 🙂
Do the fileshare documents have custom metadata already (outside of the standard metadata: title, author, created, modified etc.)? Probably not and you likely don’t want to set that up for millions of documents.
Perhaps look at a tool like Concept Searching for auto-tagging documents. I haven’t used it, but did attend a few of their webinars and it looks like an interesting product.
As for testing on a smaller scale, yes that is a good place to start. Choose a small subset of a couple thousand documents and create a content source just for that subset. Test and see what works and what doesn’t in your environment.
If you have any other specific questions along the way, don’t hesitate to ask.
