The Sharpeware Blog

Category Coming Soon SPACEWatch
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SPACEWatch ChargeBack is coming!

SPACEWatch ChargeBack is will be entering the SPACEWatch Storage Suite shortly.  It lets organizations minimize storage cost by developing and applying charging strategies for files stored in Exchange or Domino email systems, various types of file servers, SAN and NAS storage infrastructures.

SPACEWatch ChargeBack lets IT demonstrate to the business the cost of providing email storage, file servers, SAN or NAS infrastructure.

But more than this, it lets business users see how to minimize their storage costs by pin pointing where the top charges are occurring – down to user and server volume.
IT can readily design a charging strategy that drives the desired use of storage infrastructure – and business users can choose how best to apply this, using up-to-date data on how they are being charged.

For example, the charging strategy might penalize cost centers whose users store large amounts of files that they do not use – or rewards those who take the trouble to exploit cheaper storage methods.

Typically email storage is expensive and file server storage less so – IT could use their charging strategy to encourage better housekeeping from email users.

ChargeBack Data Cubes



SPACEWatch ChargeBack will use a technology new to SPACEWatch Storage Suite - multidimensional data cubes.  If you've used OLAP tools before you'll be familiar with the concept --- they're a great way to let end users quickly work with vast amounts of data.  They can rapidly re-arrange the data and explore it many different ways.

Interested?  Then contact us on sales@sharpeware.com and become one of the first to try it out.

Posted by Andrew Sharpe At 04:47:12 PM Location Peebles, Scotland | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Category Coming Soon Reporting
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We often get asked about how best to share SPACEWatch search and analysis results amongst multiple users - and as you might expect, SPACEWatch presents a range of solutions depending on the users involved.

However one question that pops up regularly is how to create custom reports.

You've always been able to create custom analysis results using the File or Directory Finder, or Virtual Folders for more sophisticated needs - but these have their limitations.  To address this we've been constructing a new custom reporting capability behind the scenes and will be launching this in SPACEWatch Enterprise, Domino and Exchange Editions from v5.7.65.



With this new capability you can take simple XML-based report templates and create even the most complex custom reporting scenarios.  We'll provide examples and can even help you construct your own.

Automation gets everywhere

And if that wasn't enough, you'll be able to automate your custom reports via scripts, and even define the output format and have those reports sent straight to your inbox.  You can pass arguments to your custom reports from your scripts, so for example you can re-use a departmental report with different areas of storage in your space database.

Now you can set up your monthly storage reporting for end users representatives, then have the results automatically email'd for you.  Get rid of those excuses and get your storage cleaned up!

Getting started

Once you've got v5.7.65 or later installed, you'll find a new directory in the installation folder called "Custom Reports".  This will contain some 'rpx' files which are the custom report file types.  You can look at these with a plain text editor such as Notepad.

To run a custom report simply open it from within SPACEWatch using the new Analyze - Reports - Open Custom Report option.  Just choose your rpx file and it will be loaded and the report will be immediately executed.  You can then do all the usual copy, save/export etc. of report results that you can with the built-in SPACEWatch reports.

To include custom reports in your automation scripts you need to use the new /R options - search for 'custom reports' in the updated product help to see a full explanation of these.

Note that the SQL syntax used will depend on your database server.  Take a look at the applications summary example and you'll see how you can make the report database server-independent.

If you want to include options from your script command lines in the SQL queries you use the 'GetOptions' function.  You can see this in action in the duplicates example, where you can optionally limit the duplicates search to a particular sub-set of your space database.

Posted by Andrew Sharpe At 04:47:12 PM Location Peebles, Scotland | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Category Coming Soon Metadata
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Michel-Adrien Sheppard of Ottawa, Canada, writes an interesting blog on file management issues in the law industry.  Like most people in this area he is concerned about hidden file metadata and writes about it here.  Michel is a reference librarian at the Supreme Court of Canada, so I guess he should know!

Metadata is typically created for you without asking and can tell people who know about these things all sorts of information about your documents - some of which you might not want to reveal.  For example, it can show change tracking comments or who originally created a document.  There is a very large amount of potential data stored - and it can get worse depending on how you share documents.  For example, email systems can add their own metadata along the way.


The forthcoming MetaData Explorer tool

To help with all this we're developing a MetaData enhancement to SPACEWatch Storage Suite that will let you explore what's going on right from your regular SPACEWatch interface.  Using the MetData Explorer you'll be able to spot when documents break your metadata guidelines - and even scrub the metadata out of the documents, if you want to go that far.

Keep a look out for this interesting enhancement later in the year --- if you want to be one of the first to try it out let us know and we'll consider you for the pre-release trials.  Just email support@sharpeware.com giving details of why you're interested and the sort of infrastructure you would be using it on.

By the way there are lots of examples that you can find on the web of embarassing metadata moments.  This one describes the infamous Tony Blair Iraq Dossier issue.  A good site to start investigating this issue in more detail is metadatarisk.org.

Posted by Andrew Sharpe At 04:47:12 PM Location Peebles, Scotland | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Category Coming Soon Web Tools
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What device do these screenshots come from?

     

If you guessed a Microsoft Windows Mobile 6 Smartphone then well done. If you guessed the model of phone then you know far too much about the latest hot tech toys (its an HTC TyTN II by the way).  If you got one for Christmas then welcome to my geek club!  

They’re great as a business tool – and you will soon be able to use this (or any other mobile device that has a pocket browser built in) for storage management via your SPACEWatch Storage Suite.  

For example, do you notice the red bar in the first screenshot above?  That’s a volume that is running low on available space.  You can then immediately use the tree summary shown in the second screenshot to see where all the storage is being used.

So how do I get a storage summary from my SPACEWatch space database displayed on my smartphone?  The answer is by using the web interface that will be available in a forthcoming update.  You can use it from a normal browser – or a pocket browser on your smartphone as in the example above.  SPACEWatch will automatically adjust its display to suite your browser.

As you can see, we have a working solution in development.  It won’t be long before customers with maintenance contracts can get a free update that includes these new features.

With the new web interface you can take a look at a range of SPACEWatch space data – and manage your storage wherever you are.  The above example shows available and used disk storage on your servers and volumes in a handy bar chart.  But you can delve much deeper.

   

As with the desktop SPACEWatch client, you can drill down to file level detail.  For example, the first  screenshot above shows another smartphone storage summary – this time top file types.  On this page I can click on any file type link and I’ll see all those files listed… then I can pick one and another click later I can see all the file detail – as shown in the second screenshot above.

You will even be able to carry out searches of your space data remotely and monitor the progress of your space database scan and merge jobs.

So if you’ve ever wanted to take SPACEWatch with you when you’re away from your desk – now you can.  With the SPACEWatch  web interface.

Posted by Andrew Sharpe At 04:47:12 PM Location Peebles, Scotland | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Category Coming Soon
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Secure Shell (SSH) is an Internet protocol that lets you establish an encrypted data stream (including encrypted login) for a number of program types that are normally unencrypted ("cleartext").  This means that, using SSH, the forthcoming SPACEWatch v5.7.71 build can securely login to your remote UNIX or linux server and retrieve storage data in a secure manner.

SSH offers two popular login methods, both of which are supported by SPACEWatch:

• Username/password is the easiest to use; as the name implies, you just log in normally, with your regular UNIX or linux username and password. But since the link is encrypted, your password stays a secret.
• Public/private-key authentication is more secure, because your password is never sent over the link at all. (What's sent is an encrypted token using your private key, instead.) To use this method, you have to create two files:

1. a public key to save on your UNIX or linux system, and
2. a private key to keep on the computer that SPACEWatch is installed on (or accessible to it, e.g. on a file server).


SSH configuration options in the SPACEWatch v5.7.71

You don't need any additional software to use this new feature - just add your UNIX and linux hosts as scheduled tasks or directly through the SPACEWatch client interface and get going.  All your familiar analyses and reports will work just they way you expect.

Note that there are some quirks however - but these are to do with how UNIX works, rather than any limitation in SPACEWatch.  For example UNIX systems don't generally store a file creation date.  Instead they have two last modified dates (one for data and one for file properties).

Posted by Andrew Sharpe At 04:47:12 PM Location Peebles, Scotland | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)