Symptoms
When Active Navigation is deployed to an environment including an archive product such as Symantec Enterprise Vault, EMC Celera or Iron Mountain Mimosa, it is important to understand how the two systems interact.
Cause
At all times, Active Navigation uses standard Application Programming Interfaces (such as Windows CIFS or SharePoint Web Services) in order to access files in any given repository using the credentials provided during its configuration. As a consequence, any underlying archive system will respond as if a user interacted with the target files according to the specific archive configuration.
Resolution
Active Navigation interacts with target files in the following ways:
- Skim. An index configured to skim reads only file system properties and does not open files, the process will proceed as normal with no special consideration needed for an archive system.
- Analysis. An analysis index reads the target files into a cache for local analysis. If not configured otherwise, an underlying archive system will respond as if a user had opened the file, usually causing analyzed files to be restored from archive to local storage.
- Analysis Performance. Archives are often throttled which means that, without configuration otherwise, archive constraints will have a significant impact on analysis performance by restricting the rate at which files can be read into the local cache. This situation is often exacerbated by the typically slow performance of archive storage media.
- Deletion/Move Actions. As described above, actions will function as if a user had undertaken the equivalent action with the archive system responding accordingly.
The configuration of specific archive systems is beyond the scope of this article. However, the following general provisions can be made as part of an Active Navigation deployment:
- Service Account Configuration. Archive systems can be configured to behave differently in response to the service account provided for Active Navigation’s analysis. Appropriate configuration can avoid restoration of files from archive during the indexing process.
- Local File Caching. Where the archive system provides such a feature, caching can be configured so that analyzed files are only temporarily restored to a local cache during analysis before being returned to archive.
The specific availability of these and other features will depend upon the local archive implementation and strategy. Be sure to understand your specific situation before undertaking bulk analysis or actions using Active Navigation.
Applies to
Active Navigation Discovery Center 4.x