How to install and automate SPACEWatch data collection.


SPACEWatch Enterprise , Domino and Exchange Edition all use an external shared SQL database. SPACEWatch maintains this database with up-to-date data from across your file and email servers. It allows interested staff from within your organisation to quickly carry out search and analysis down to file level – and generate reports from these results – without even needing access to those servers.

If you have a large amount of storage it can take some time to complete an update of your space database – how can this situation be improved so your PC is not kept busy for long periods?

The answer is to separate and automate data update.

In this way you will not need to wait to scan your servers, NAS or SAN each time you want to use SPACEWatch. You can simply load SPACEWatch and immediately start getting results from across your entire storage and email infrastructure.

Automating data update

SPACEWatch can collect and maintain file-level data from any part of your file and email servers. It does this locally or remotely – you do not have to install agents on your servers.

To help with automation, the above SPACEWatch Editions include a SPACEWatch Scheduler. The Scheduler lets you quickly and easily maintain complex automation schedules – not just for data collection, but also routine report generation and distribution via email.

But when you have millions of files to search and analyze, collecting all this data in a single scan can be time consuming – even if you automate the process.

What options exist to improve on single-scan data update?

There are two areas to consider:

  • Where is SPACEWatch installed
  • What automation schedule do you use with each installation.

Installation options

SPACEWatch can collect data from local or remote systems. This means you can install SPACEWatch on the server from which you are collecting data (it must be a Windows server) – or you can install it on a dedicated PC or server and collect data from one or more remote servers.

This picture shows some of the different configurations you might consider:



Different ways to install SPACEWatch

Fastest performance can be obtained by installing SPACEWatch for local data collection. In this way you can automate data collection and update the central space database from many sources at the same time.

However, for some servers – e.g. email, Netware or linux – you should always use remote data collection. You can still schedule multiple collection tasks, but you do not install SPACEWatch on the servers you are collecting from.

Scheduling collection

Wherever you install SPACEWatch you can set up flexible schedules to automate data collection. For example, instead of a single scan you might carry out scans of different parts of your servers at different times. Or alternatively you might scan multiple servers at the same time.

How do you automate data collection?

The first step is to decide how you want to split up data collection, and how often you want this schedule repeated. The picture below shows some different approaches.



Different ways to schedule collections

Depending on your operational requirements a typical schedule is repeated each week – so space data from a particular disk might be updated in the space database once per week.

However, it is good practice to stagger collections so that you reduce the peak load on the infrastructure. For example, you might update space data from different disks on different days – or from different servers on different days.

To create your schedule Sharpeware provide an additional tool – the SPACEWatch Scheduler. This tool allows you to quickly review your scheduled tasks, adding, updating or removing tasks as required. You can also use the Scheduler tool to automate other SPACEWatch tasks such as report generation, and distribution of the report results in PDF format by email.

You can also choose which space database to collect space into on a task-by-task basis. So for example, you may find it useful for analysis purposes to keep all space data from particular sets of servers in their own space database.

Whichever scheduling approach you take you can continue to use SPACEWatch to search, analyze and report on your space data.

If you have any questions about how to design or deploy your SPACEWatch automation strategy please contact your sales representative, or email sales@sharpeware.com.
SPACEWatch 5 Best Practice Guide
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