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13 April 2010
Recently I bumped on a blog article that was two years old but seen the comments the discussion was still alive. The article was about the fact that Microsoft stored its SharePoint content in SQL Server with al its limitations like backup and restore issues and storing less important content on expensive storage, but with the EBS External Blob Store API Microsoft provided a way out. You could connect to an external storage but Microsft itself was not going to provide that. Their argument is that they are software company and not willing to take care of all the various hardware the external storage could run on. That was a challenge for either the hardware vendors or the software developers. Well, if you have been to our site before and now about STEALTH Software than you know the answer... Anyhow, the writer of the article was not amused with the EBS API as it did not solve the issue of storing less important content on expensive storage, "Not all content are equal!" as the writer points out. And that is true.
EBS External Blob Store
So with the EBS API it is possible to get rid off the SQL Server storage limitations, only you needed third party software like our STEALTH Content Store for SharePoint. This software will connect your SharePoint with an external Storage environment. This external storage platform can be based on private (cloud) storage software from Caringo CAStor, or Scality or if you prefer a public storage solution you can connect with Windows Azure, Amazon S3 and EMC Atmos. Opting for this storage infrastructure you are liberating your SharePoint platform from its SQL Server chains. When you upload content in SharePoint the STEALTH Software separates the metadata from the content (blob). The metadata are stored in SQL, the content goes in the external storage. This simple action has a major impact on SharePoint: performance is back at the level when you started with SharePoint, you can scale your SharePoint as much as you want to. If you want to put all your company content in SharePoint there is no barrier anymore that will hold you back. We have presented this 'revolutionary' infrastructure to companies who were struggling with their 200-300GB SQL storage. When management found out that they can finally make full use of SharePoint they decided to put all thier content in SharePoint creating a storage of several TB's. Which ofcourse for external storage environments is not a big thing. For SQL it would have been a big issue. One of the other results that our customers liked was the very fast backup and restore times. With only metadata in SQL backup and restore times are more minutes than hours this to big relief of the people who are responsible for backup and SLA's. Backup of content is not needed as the external storage environment automatically duplicates the content.
SharePoint 2010 presents RBS Remote Blob Store
With the arrival of SharePoint 2010 things become a little more fun, because with RBS STEALTH Content Store can actually direct content to different storage environments. Now, we are coming to the point what the writer of the article wanted so much. What EBS could not provide, RBS will. Say you want some content fast, than use a ParaScale or Bizanga Store environment, these guys have fast i/o's, if your collegue of Archive is more interested in retention periods than he/she can store the content in a CAStor storage environment where CAStor takes care that the item is stored safely for 7 years. And if you have content that is not business critical but valuable enough to keep why not store that in Windows Azure. As we encrypt all SharePoint content with AES Advanced Encryption Standard 256 bit you don't have to worry about security of public cloud storage, your content is already secured.
Bottomline of my story is that Microsoft indeed has not addressed the SQL storage issue with the arrival of SharePoint 2010, but there is a solution for it. And with RBS Remote Blob Store the solution just got better. A solution that will enable organizations to use SharePoint for the purpose that they got it in the first place. SharePoint (2010) is a worthy Enterprise Content Management system that users over the whole world love. It is actually bizarre that at the back-end SharePoint is 'being held hostage' by limited storage capabilities and where the main options are usually buy more expensive storage or preventing the upload of more content in SharePoint. I even heard of a situation at a big entreprise company that a mail was sent to users to delete content in order to lower the storage! Well, that is completely in line with the spirit of SharePoint...not! Using another (very expensive) content management system to be an add-on to SharePoint is actually also quite extraordinary, laying an unneccessary burden on the users (2 learning curves) and operational managers, not to mention the huge costs
There is a solution and it is actually not complex, but it requires guts to look at storage infrastructure in a different way, leaving the well-known traditional path. I have noticed also unbelieve: how can a storage infrastructure be let's say only 30% of what we usually pay for? Well, what can I say: Times have changed. SharePoint is taking over Content Management world and The 'Watercurtain' Storage infrastructure (or call it SharePoint Storage 2.0) will eventually replace the fileserver silo's. Life will be less complex and cheaper..what else do you want?
For a comparison between native SharePoint and STEALTH Software Content Store for SharePoint, check out the Comparison Overview
Download the presentation that gives you detailed insight how STEALTH Software Content Store works and how the SharePoint 2007 and 2010 content is stored in the various external storage and not in the SQL server.
Need more in-depth information? Please contact us!
