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.Â
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?Â
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.Â
Vikki McCormick
I don’t think you’re missing anything, Vikki. In my experience, this is a common request: move everything from the fileshare to SharePoint.
You’re right, there needs to be some justification (up front) for the effort.
If search is the goal, then crawling the fileshare from SharePoint makes sense as a solution. SharePoint search is quite fast and easy to setup. However, with so many documents, you will need a good amount of server horsepower to index all of those docs.
Are you unconvinced about the benefits of SharePoint search?
