FileCensus Instant Storage Insight

FileCensus

Instant Storage Insight

Chapter 0

Reference

Chapter 0

Guide

FileCensus Ver 3.3

(rev 1.1)

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Table of Contents

Copyright Notice... ii

Chapter 0 -

- Preface

Part I - Introduction...2

Part II - Using FileCensus ...2

Part III - Storage Analysis ...2

Part IV - Appendixes ...2

How to use this Guide ... 3

Where to Start ...3

Tables and Notes...3

Views...3

Appendixes...4

Website...4

Reference Guide Format ... 5

Hard-copy Format ...5

Adobe Acrobat Format...6

Part I - Introduction

Chapter 1 - FileCensus Overview

Storage Management with FileCensus... 10

Image Capture... 10

Image Analysis & Management... 11

Supported Platforms ... 11

Storage Management Portal ... 12

Analysis ... 12

Part II - Using FileCensus

Chapter 2 - User Interface

Page Tabs ... 18

Page Controls ... 19

Page Heading Bar ... 20

Page Control Bar ... 20

Gadget Heading ... 21

Gadget Controls ... 21

Sorting Controls ... 21

Page and Row Numbers... 22

Column Types ... 24

Dates... 24

Size and Space ... 25

Chapter 3 - Scopes and Options

FileCensus Images... 28

FileCensus Scopes ... 28

Selecting a Single Scope ... 29

Running a FileCensus Report ... 29

Report Selection... 29

Scope Selection... 29

Selecting Options ... 33

Selecting Multiple Scopes ... 34

Selecting Report Options ... 35

Name ... 36 Path ... 37 Size... 38 Date ... 38 Type ... 39 User ... 40 Attributes ... 40 Advanced Options ... 42 Operators... 42 Wildcards ... 44 Keywords ... 45 Brackets... 48

Chapter 4 - Graphs

Tooltips... 61

Chart Area Tooltips ... 61

Axis Tooltips ... 61

Graph Options ... 62

OK, Cancel, Apply, Defaults ... 62

Dimensions... 62

Sorting ... 63

Display ... 63

Series Areas ... 63

Graph Colors ... 66

Manually Selecting Colors ... 66

Automatic Colors ... 66

Chapter 5 - My Setup

File Extension Details ... 75

Password ... 77

Changing your Password ... 77

Chapter 6 - Administration

Scopes Gadget ... 81

Scope Details Gadget ... 83

Roles ... 87

Roles Gadget ... 88

Role Details Gadget ... 88

Users... 90

Users Gadget ... 90

User Details Gadget ... 91

Options ... 93

General Configuration Gadget ... 93

License ... 96

Types ... 97

File Types... 98

Agents ... 99

When... 99

Servers and Volumes ... 100

NetWare... 101

Status... 102

Web Server Information ... 102

Image Library Information ... 103

Message Log... 104

Support ... 105

Chapter 7 - Agents & Agent Monitor

Browser Information ... 108

General Information... 111

Agent Reporting ... 113

Part III - Storage Analysis

Chapter 8 - File Analysis

Search ... 120

Summary ... 120

Bulk Export... 121

Multiple Platform Reporting... 121

Active Management ... 121

Largest ... 123

Duplicated... 124

Replicated ... 125

History... 127

Chapter 9 - Path Analysis

Search ... 131

Profile... 132

Largest ... 133

Empty... 134

Chapter 10 - Space Analysis

By Size ... 137

By Date ... 138

By User... 139

By Age... 140

Chapter 11 - Change Analysis

Files ... 145 Options ... 147 Baselines ... 148 History... 149 Options ... 150

Chapter 12 - NetWare

Rights Filters (IRFs) ... 153

Quotas... 154 Volume Details... 155

Chapter 13 - Chargeback

Path Based Model ... 158

Sharing Costs ... 158

Logical Storage Modelling ... 159

Modelling the Future ... 159

Hierarchy Modelling ... 159

Billing for Unused Storage ... 159

Chargeback Report Features ... 160

Multi-Tier Support ... 160

Multiple Views ... 160

View by Currency or Bytes ... 160

Sharing Storage Costs... 161

Single Volume Multi-Level Costs ... 161

Unused Disk Charging ... 161

Drilldown on Reports... 161

Definable Billing Periods ... 161

Current Cycle... 162 Previous Cycle ... 163 Other Periods... 164

Chapter 14 - Extras

Chapter 15 - External Data Access

HTTP Address Format... 170

Excel Data Access... 175

Formatting an IQY File ... 175 Formatting Prompts ... 180

Part IV - Appendixes

Appendix A - Column Descriptions

WindowsNT Columns ... 186 Workstation Columns ... 191 NetWare Columns... 194

Appendix B - File Attributes

NT File Attributes ... 202 Workstation File Attributes... 203 NetWare File Attributes ... 204

Appendix C - Commandline Options

Server Commandline Options ... 206 Agent Commandline Options ... 211

Preface

Reference Guide Overview

Introduces the FileCensus Reference Guide and provides an overview of the structure and main parts of the guide.

How to use this Guide

Details some useful guidelines to help better understand FileCensus and the Reference Guide.

Reference Guide Format

Recommendations for using the online or hard-copy format of the Reference Guide.

Welcome to the FileCensus Reference Guide.

The following sections will detail information on to get the best from the FileCensus Reference Guide.

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Reference Guide Overview

This Reference Guide is designed to give you the essential information needed to use FileCensus version 3. The Reference Guide is organized into four parts with several chapters in each. At the start of each chapter there is an overview and contents guide providing a brief introduction to the contents of the chapter.

The four main parts of the Reference Guide are outlined in the sections below.

Part I - Introduction

Part I provides an overview of FileCensus, centralized image management, and an overview of the main entry point into FileCensus, the Storage Management Portal.

Part II - Using FileCensus

Part II details the look and feel of the FileCensus user interface. All of FileCensus buttons, headings, and specific FileCensus functions are explained in detail. This section also discusses the various setup options that can be configured, from personal display settings, to environment management related functions.

Part III - Storage Analysis

Part III details the sections of FileCensus which allow analysis of image data - File Analysis, Path Analysis, Change Analysis, and Space Analysis.

Part IV - Appendixes

Part IV contains a detailed list of all of the columns on the supported FileCensus platforms. Each column entry has a description of its function and table breakdown of its availability on captured images. Part IV also contains tables of the file attributes for each of the supported capture platforms.

How to use this Guide

The sections below outline some useful guidelines to help better understand FileCensus, FileCensus Reference Guide, and where to obtain additional information and support if required

Where to Start

To quickly start using FileCensus and the FileCensus Reference Guide, we recommend you read Chapter 2, Page 17 - User Interface and then use the rest of the Reference Guide as a reference manual, and refer back to the sections as you need them.

The Storage Analysis chapters have a similar format for presenting information on FileCensus and can be read from beginning to end or used as a handy reference guide.

Tables and Notes

The many tables and notes throughout the FileCensus Reference Guide are used to help present the large amount of information in a formatted and easy to understand form.

Tables are used throughout this guide and are used to display information on the default columns in the views, the additional columns available for selection, buttons, and other helpful hints. Note boxes appear on the left side of a page and are designed to highlight important capabilities, limitations, and relevant tips to the current section in a chapter.

See the Note box to the left for an example.

Views

All of the views in the Storage Analysis section have a similar presentation format. Each of the view sections is broken up into the following areas.

View Description

Each view has several paragraphs describing what the view does and what it is used for.

Screen Shot

After the View Description there is a screen shot of the view with some example data to display the view in normal use.

Note box

This Note box will appear on many sections of the FileCensus Reference Guide to highlight important items of information.

Appendixes

Appendix A has a list of all of the columns that can be found for each platform that FileCensus supports.

Appendix B has a list of all of the file attributes for NetWare, NT, and Workstation platforms.

Website

If you have access to the Internet you can visit the FileCensus website at the following address:

www.intermine.com

The website contains information on the FileCensus products and sales information such as licensing and pricing. Where there is a need to obtain further expert advice about how to get the most out of FileCensus, we recommend a visit to the FileCensus Website products page, support forums page (for registered customers) or contact a support consultant at:

Reference Guide Format

In designing the documentation for FileCensus, we appreciated that people may prefer to view the Reference Guide online, or they may wish to print the Reference Guide to have a hard-copy. With this in mind, we have outlined some recommendations below for using the hard-copy and the online formats.

Hard-copy Format

The hard-copy version of FileCensus does not lose any of information detailed in the Reference Guide, however, there are a few issues to be aware of when printing the documentation. These issues are detailed in the following sections.

Size

The documentation is approximately 180 pages, including appendixes, images, and contents information.

Depending on your printer, we recommend you print the Reference Guide documentation at a time when the printer will not be used for an extended period of time.

Images

There are many pictures of screens, buttons, tables, and other images throughout the FileCensus Reference Guide.

While a 300dpi printer will print the pictures in a respectable quality, we recommended at least a 600dpi printer be used.

Double-sided

The Reference Guide has been formatted to support double-sided printing. If your printer can support it, we recommend using double-sided printing to reduce the amount of paper required and to also improve the formatting of the documentation.

Color

FileCensus uses color extensively throughout its views to indicate breaks in sections of data, different aspects of functionality, visual indications of incorrect data, links to references, and many other functions.

Although printing to a non-color printer will give you a grey-scaled picture of respectable quality, a color printed version of the documentation is recommended.

Adobe Acrobat Format

The electronic version of this documentation has been created for Adobe Acrobat Reader Version 4 and later versions, and has some benefits over a hard-copy version of the documentation.

Size

The Reference Guide is approximately 6.9MB in size and updates can

be transferred by electronic means.

Images

Almost all of the pictures used in the Reference Guide can be magnified many times without a reduction in quality. Magnifying the Reference Guide is useful if you like to read the manual at a larger magnification for better text clarity.

Color

The Reference Guide makes extensive use of color to indicate breaks in sections of data, different aspects of functionality, visual indications of incorrect data, links to references, and many other functions.

References

One of the strongest aspects of the Acrobat format is the ability to create a reference to another Part, Chapter, or even word. This technique is similar to a hyperlink in a browser and is used extensively in the FileCensus Reference Guide. It is very useful for quickly jumping from one section to another without losing your place in the guide.

The Acrobat Reader also works in a similar manner to a normal browser with respect to keeping a history of the sections you have linked to. By pressing the previous and next buttons in the Acrobat Reader you can immediately move between the sections you have been reading.

Searching

Acrobat Reader can perform searches on all the information in the Reference Guide.

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Chapter 1

FileCensus Overview

Introduction to FileCensus

An introduction to storage resource analysis and management using FileCensus.

Storage Management Portal

FileCensus is a powerful Storage Analysis and Storage Management application.

In this chapter we present an overview of FileCensus and a brief introduction to the major components of FileCensus.

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Introduction to FileCensus

Organizations of all sizes continue to face the challenge of managing growth in storage capacity. The explosion in the use of the internet, e-mail, e-commerce and knowledge management is leading to a dramatic increase in the amount of storage required and the resources dedicated to managing it.

The solution to managing this growth effectively and efficiently is FileCensus. FileCensus is a Storage Resource Management (SRM) application that captures detailed information about how storage is being used by servers distributed across a network, and presents a broad range of customizable reports through a web interface.

Because of the unique compression techniques employed by FileCensus, information on thousands of servers and millions of files stretching back years in time can be analyzed and presented with unprecedented levels of speed.

Storage Management with

FileCensus

FileCensus is a web based storage management solution which has been specifically designed to solve many of the storage management issues in today's rapidly expanding IT environment. By automating the identification, management, and report of storage usage in your organization, FileCensus can save time and money immediately. Using unique technology FileCensus can automatically scan storage resources on Windows NT, 2000, 98 & 95, Netware 4x and 5x, and Linux to create highly compressed resource images. These images are accessed from any location with internet access through the FileCensus web based Management Portal. The Portal provides centralized and resource specific views for resource monitoring, reporting and detailed analysis.

Image Capture

There are two types of programs supplied with the FileCensus package, the Agent program and the Server program.

The Agent programs are responsible for 'scanning' the storage on your computers to create the compressed images.

These images contain information about the files and directories on the computer and the users responsible for this data. The images can be automatically transferred to another server for consolidated reporting by the Server program for analysis and resource management.

Image Analysis & Management

The FileCensus server program uses web server technology to enable access from any browser. The automatically created and maintained site provides the information you need to effectively manage your storage resources. You can choose to run the sever program on a range of platforms best suited to your environment.

Once the server program has been installed and is running you can simply browse to the machine where the program is running to access the FileCensus server.

Supported Platforms

FileCensus will capture and analyze your companies information on several platforms. The table below lists the platforms and whether they support both the FileCensus Agent and the FileCensus Server.

Platform Server Agent

Windows NT4, NT2000, XP • •

Windows 95 & 98 • •

NetWare 4.x, 5.x, 6.x • •

Linux (Intel & W.I.N.E.) • • Linux (Intel, OS390, Itanium) •

Solaris (Sparc) •

True64 (Alpha) •

BSD (Intel) •

Storage Management Portal

The Storage Management Portal is the main entry point to all of the FileCensus Resource Analysis views, Resource Management views, and configuration options.

Analysis

FileCensus has the capability to perform powerful Storage Analysis on the collected image data. The types of analysis available on an image have been broken up into four areas, File, Directory, Change, and Space Analysis. Each of these areas are discussed in the sections below.

File Analysis

The File Analysis section allows you to view your image data at the detailed file level. Many of the other Analysis sections allow you to view file level details and will often link to the File Analysis views.

Directory Analysis

After File Analysis, the next step in analyzing image data is the ability to perform directory level analysis. The Directory Analysis chapter uses some of the same views as the File Analysis chapter, such as Largest Size and Duplicate files, and applies this at a directory level. Some additional directory specific reports are also available to help in analyzing the data captured in your images.

Space Analysis

The File and Path Analysis chapters performed reporting on individual files and directories. The Space Analysis chapter allows resources to be managed by analyzing data by the different attribute types and summary levels of the data.

Change Analysis

All of the File, Path, and Space Analysis views have so far have concentrated their analysis on one image. With the introduction of the Change Analysis section, we can now analyze multiple images to detect changes in an organizations data.

Change Analysis is one of the most powerful areas in FileCensus. Change analysis allows tracking, reporting, forecasting and trend analysis of changes in resource data down to the file and ownership level.

NetWare Analysis

The reports in the NetWare Analysis section focus on NetWare specific reporting features. These reports relate to Right, Inherited Rights Filters (IRFs), Quotas, and NetWare specific Volume information.

Chargeback Analysis

Cost recovery for storage resources is a complex area to get right. Storage consumers will ask questions when presented with costs that seem to have no hard numbers backing them up. FileCensus can provide you with the information you need to successfully calculate, and justify storage consumption across your entire environment. Storage consumers can be given access to the web interface to safely self manage the storage they are being charged for. With better informed storage consumers the life span of your current disk and tape assets can be increased. The level of detail can also bring you closer to being cost neutral, increasing the competitiveness of your internal technology group.

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Chapter 2

User Interface

Page Layout

The controls used to move between pages, change your page size, and other page related functions.

Gadgets

Explains what a FileCensus gadget is and how they are used.

Column Types

An explanation of the types of columns in FileCensus and the different ways they can be displayed.

The FileCensus User Interface has been designed with ease of use in mind. The user interface can display vast amounts of current and historical information in an efficient manner without sacrificing usability.

Most of the user interface functionality in FileCensus will be familiar to you. This chapter discusses how these common user interface standards are applied in FileCensus and how to help you get the best results from using FileCensus.

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Page Layout

This section details each of the areas which go to make up the FileCensus user interface.

Page Tabs

Clicking on one of the folder tabs that appear at the top of each page allows you can navigate to a new page. Each of the tabs are discussed in the following sections.

Reports

The Reports tab is the default display once a user has logged in to FileCensus. The Reports tab displays all of the reports for File, Path, Space, Change Analysis, NetWare, Chargeback, Extras, and other reports that the user has been given access to.

If the user has more than one role assigned to them, the Available Roles section is also displayed which allows the user to change their current role by clicking on a role name. Roles are an important aspect of FileCensus and are discussed in detail in Chapter 6, Page 87 - Roles. See the following sections for information on the available reports:

Administration

The Administration tab folder contains the FileCensus configuration options for both user and organization level preferences, including scopes, roles, users, auditing, and agent configuration. See the following sections for information on the administration options:

Chapter Reference

File Chapter 8, Page 117 - File Analysis

Path Chapter 9, Page 129 - Path Analysis

Space Chapter 10, Page 135 - Space Analysis

Change Chapter 11, Page 141 - Change Analysis

NetWare Chapter 12, Page 151 - NetWare

Chargeback Chapter 13, Page 157 - Chargeback

Extras Chapter 14, Page 165 - Extras

Section Reference

Scopes Chapter 6, Page 80 - Scopes

Roles Chapter 6, Page 87 - Roles

Users Chapter 6, Page 90 - Users

Options Chapter 6, Page 93 - Options

License Chapter 6, Page 96 - License

Types Chapter 6, Page 97 - Types

My Setup

The My Setup tab folder details the setup options available when configuring FileCensus for the currently logged in user. The folder contains options which include global report settings, color schemes, fonts, byte and date display defaults, and password maintenance. See the following sections for information on the personal setup options:

Page Controls

The Page Controls appear at the top part of every page in FileCensus. The Page Controls consist of two text links and a version and license text area. Each of the controls is described in the sections below.

License Information

Unlike the other Page Controls, the License Information area is not a selectable text link, and simply displays a brief description about the current FileCensus licensing information and software version.

Logoff

The logoff text link is used to exit the FileCensus application cleanly. Any configuration changes made will be stored in a managed repository of user information on the FileCensus Primary Server. If a user exits FileCensus without selecting the Logoff link, by closing the browser for example, then any layout changes made during their session will not be retained.

About

Clicking on the About text link will display FileCensus program information, including version number and the server platform.

FileCensus logo

The FileCensus logo is present on all of the views. Clicking on the logo will display the “About” view (see above).

Status Chapter 6, Page 102 - Status

Support Chapter 6, Page 105 - Support

Section Reference

Sizes Chapter 5, Page 70 - Sizes

Dates Chapter 5, Page 72 - Dates

Types Chapter 5, Page 74 - Types

Password Chapter 5, Page 77 - Password

Page Heading Bar

The Page Heading Bar appears at the top of every page in FileCensus and supports the page tabs. The bar is used to provide information about the current page, such as a short description about the pages function, directions on what actions can be performed on the page, a directory path, or buttons, or a combination of the above.

When the mouse is moved over various parts of the page the Page Heading bar will display a small note about that object. For example, moving the mouse over a directory name in the Path Details gadget will display a short text message about the directory.

On most FileCensus reports the right-hand side of the bar will display a small control icon. This is the Reset control. Moving the mouse over the control will display the text message:

Restore Default Settings

Clicking on the Reset control in the Page Heading Bar will restore the page to its default layout which will restore all of the gadgets to their original positions.

Page Control Bar

The Page Control Bar appears at the top of every page in FileCensus under the Page Heading Bar. Depending on the currently displayed view the Page Control bar will contain different text messages and controls. Each of the reports and administration sections which use the Page Control bar will detail the controls that are displayed in the bar and their function.

Page Control Bar

Page Heading Bar RestoreDefault

Gadgets

Gadgets are an important aspect of FileCensus. A gadget is a self contained mini-report, or view, which displays columns of information. Each of the following section details the different areas and functions of gadgets.

Gadget Heading

Each gadget displayed on a page has a heading bar at the top of the gadget. The heading bar contains the title or short description of the gadget on the left-hand side of the bar.

Gadget Controls

The gadget controls allow the ability to add and remove columns on a gadget and to export the information in a gadget to Microsoft XLS format. The controls are common to all gadgets in FileCensus and can be found at the bottom of all gadgets.

XLS

Clicking on the XLS word at the bottom of the gadget will export the total number of visible rows and columns to Excel spreadsheet.

CSV

Clicking on the CSV word at the bottom of the gadget will export the total number of visible rows and columns to a comma separated file.

Options

Clicking on the Options word will open the Options Panel for the selected gadget. The Options Panel will vary depending on the gadget. Changing the values in the Options Panel for a gadget will only affect that gadget.

Sorting Controls

Every column on a gadget has the ability to be sorted. Most gadgets will have a column sorted by default although this can be changed by sorting another column. The last sort order of the column is remembered by FileCensus so when you next view that page the gadget will be sorted by the column you last sorted.

If a column is sorted it will have a small directional arrow next to the column name to indicate whether the column is sorted in ascending or descending order. Only one column can be sorted at a time in a gadget.

Note on initial sort orders

If the column you are sorting is a date or a number value, then the initial sort order will be descending. If the column is a text column then the initial sort will be ascending.

The following two icons display the two types of sort orders:

Date and Number columns in FileCensus are initially ordered by a descending sort (i.e. largest to smallest number) by default. The descending order was selected because all of the columns which are numbers are usually disk size and space, which would allow the largest number to be displayed in the first row.

By ordering date columns in the same manner, all of the most recent dates will be ordered first.

Text fields are sorted with a ascending sort (i.e. a to z) by default. To change the sort order between ascending and descending you click again on the column that is sorted. For example, if you had clicked on the Size column to sort the gadget by Size, the column would be sorted in descending order with the largest values first. To change the sort order to ascending you would click on the Size column again.

Page and Row Numbers

The page and row number controls are located at the bottom left of each gadget. The image to the left highlights each of the components which make up the row and page number information. Each component is detailed in the following sections.

Displayed Rows

The displayed rows component displays what range of rows is currently displayed on the gadget. By default the number of rows per page is set at ten rows.

The page length can be changed by selecting the Options button for the gadget and clicking on one of the radio button values in the Page Length section. Once you have clicked on the OK or Apply button to accept your change the gadget will re-display its contents based on the new page length you selected. The Rows area will also update to reflect the new page length.

The example diagram above shows rows 21 to 30 are currently displayed. This indicates that the default page length is ten rows and the user has browsed through two pages (see the Next Page section below on how to move to the next page of results).

Total Rows

The Total Rows section displays the total number of rows that are reported in the gadget.

The example diagram above displays 140 rows as the total number of rows in the gadget. Because the gadget is displaying ten rows per page, you can immediately see that there would be fourteen pages of

Ascending sort order Descending sort order

Displayed rows

Total rows Rows 21 .. 30 of 140

results available. If you do not feel like paging through fourteen pages of results to look at the data, you can click on the Options button and modify the page length and click on 100 (for two pages of results) or 250 (for one page of results).

In some cases the number of rows returned is less than the page length (especially if the page length has been changed to a large number). In this case the message displayed at the bottom left of the gadget will simply display the number of rows on the gadget and an indication that all of the rows are displayed. The following example would indicate that all of the gadgets rows are displayed:

All 9 Rows

Page Controls

The first page button will re-display the first page of results.

The previous page button will re-display the previous page of results. The next page button will display the next page of results.

The last page button will display the last page of the results.

First Page

Previous Page

Next Page

Column Types

FileCensus uses various methods to display the large amounts of data commonly displayed during image analysis. The following sections detail the different types of columns, e.g. dates, sizes, and text, and how FileCensus uses the display formats of these column types to help present the image data. All of the columns in FileCensus are detailed

in Appendix A, Page 185 - Column Descriptions.

Dates

Dates are present in almost all of the data collected by FileCensus. To help present dates in a more readable and distinctive style, FileCensus provides several options for changing how dates are displayed. Each of these options, and how to configure them, is detailed in the following sections.

Date Colors

All dates can be colored to indicate their age. If there is no entry in a date column then the date is invalid, such as a date with a zero value, and is classed as unknown. The default colors for dates are detailed in the following table:

* Based on the current date being the 21 August 2001.

The default colors can be changed by selecting the My Setup tab and selecting the Dates section. The Date Bands gadget will be displayed, allowing any of the date types to have their color changed by clicking on the list box next to the date type and selecting a new color.

Relative Dates

When dates are displayed on gadgets they can be displayed in two different types of format - normal and relative dates. Normal dates are displayed in the format of day, month, and year (e.g., 26/Aug/2001), while relative dates are displayed as how old the date is from current date (e.g., 1y 02m 13d means that the date is 1 year 2 months and 13 days old).

Date Type Color Examples* < 1 Day Black 20/Aug/2001 < 1 Week Black 16/Aug/2001 < 1 Month Green 23/Jul/2001

< 2 Months SteelBlue 15/Feb/2001 < 3 Months Purple 15/Feb/2000 < 1 Year Crimson 23/Jan/1999

By selecting the Grid Options button on a the gadget (see Chapter 2,

Page 21 - Options) you can change the display of the date to be relative.

Some example normal and relative dates are displayed in the following table:

* Based on the current date being the 10 September 2001.

Both the normal and relative versions of the dates use the default colors set in the My Setup - Dates view for the date and time period.

Dates and Times

Gadgets can display both normal and relative dates with or without a time value. By turning on the time for a date column you can view the hour, minute, and second of the date value.

To display the time for a date column, start by selecting the Grid Options button on the gadget (see Chapter 2, Page 21 - Options) and then click in the box next to the Time checkbox for the date column you wish to display the time for. Click on the Apply or OK button in the Grid Options area to accept your changes and the date column on the gadget will now display the hours, minutes, and seconds. Examples of how both normal and relative dates are affected by selecting the Time checkbox can be seen in the following table:

* Relative Dates calculated on the current date being the 10 September 2001.

Both the normal and relative versions of the dates use the default colors set in the My Setup - Dates view for the date and time period.

Size and Space

One of the most important issues when using FileCensus to manage resources is examining the sizes of directories, files, and even the resource itself. All of the size related columns in FileCensus are formatted to help in easily understanding where size is being used the most (and least).

The Size and Space columns are amongst the most common size related columns in FileCensus. The Size column is a record of a file or directories logical size as displayed by the operating system.

Normal Date Relative Date*

15/Dec/1999 2y 08m 26d

27/Aug/2001 14d

Date Format Example Value*

Normal Date 15/Dec/1999

Normal Date & Time 15/Dec/1999 11:36:54

Relative Date 2y 08m 26d

The Space column is the actual physical disk space the file or directory uses. The value recorded in the Space column will vary depending on the operating system.

The default colors for sizes are detailed in the following table:

The default colors can be changed by selecting the My Setup tab and selecting the Sizes link. The Size Bands gadget will be displayed, allowing any of the byte types to have their color changed by clicking on the list box next to the byte type and selecting a new color.

The displayed byte size will be rounded to one decimal place based on the display scale. The color of the displayed value will also change based on the directory and file size.

The Size and Space columns will not always be the same size. The differences can be attributed to several factors, such as, NetWare and NT Sparse written files, unwritten files during an image capture, corrupted files, and NetWare and NT operating system compression.

Byte Range Name Display Color Example

100 KB Small KB Black 22B

1 MB Medium MB Green 668.4KB

100 MB Large MB SteelBlue 139.2MB

1 GB Huge GB Crimson 5.6GB

Chapter 3

Scopes and Options

Scopes

Details the unique FileCensus Scopes and how they facilitate reporting.

Selecting a Single Scope

Details the process for selecting a single scope when running FileCensus reports.

Selecting Multiple Scopes

Details the process for selecting a multiple scopes when running FileCensus reports.

Selecting Report Options

Details the process for selecting basic conditions when running FileCensus reports.

Advanced Options

Details the process for selecting advanced conditions when running FileCensus reports.

Scopes are one of the most important ways FileCensus manages its collected data repository.

This chapter will detail the benefits of Scopes and how to best use them to categorize the servers and volumes in an organization.

The Filter options allows an almost limitless variation to the FileCensus reports. Every single report in FileCensus has the ability to have search conditions applied to them.

Cont

Scopes

FileCensus Images

When the FileCensus Agents scan volumes on a server a FileCensus “image” is created. This image is a compressed collection of every single piece of metadata about every single file on that volume. A file is created with the server and volumes name with an FSI extension (FileCensus System Image) which contains all of this information. The FileCensus images are the data repository of all the information collected from the servers and volumes.

FileCensus Scopes

Scopes are one of the most important ways FileCensus manages its collected data repository.

A scope, by definition, is an area covered by a given subject. In FileCensus terms the “area” is a collection of servers and volumes and the “subject” is a term used to describe that collection.

The FileCensus Agents will scan a server’s volumes and create a FileCensus “image” (see above for a description of images). These images can then be collected into a logical group called a Scope. Because Scopes are logical groupings, an image can belong to many Scopes if required.

An example of a FileCensus Scope may be as follows:

A company has several Windows and Unix severs with a several User volumes or shares in each operating system environment. A Scope can be created in FileCensus called “User”, which from our definition above is referred to as the subject or description of the Scope. All of the User volumes (the area or collection of images) can be assigned to this newly created User Scope. FileCensus reports can now be run using this User Scope and each report will only run on the User volumes that are present in that scope. Having the ability to creating and modify these Scopes is a very powerful feature in FileCensus. This feature allows an end user to be able to run reports against an individual volume, such as single User volume on a server as described above, or against every User volume in the whole organization.

Scope Hierarchy

A Scope hierarchy can be created by having Scopes within Scopes. FileCensus allows multiple levels of Scopes to be created, so you can easily group Scopes into logical levels as well as areas. For example you could create a list of country Scopes, then state Scopes, and then regional level Scopes under the state Scopes. This allows you to run reports against a region, or state, or country.

Selecting a Single Scope

The concept and use of Scopes is crucial to using FileCensus. Scopes can either be a single image or a collection of images (an image being a scan of a server and volume by one of the FileCensus Agents). In this section we are interested in reports that require a single Scope (a single Image or collection of Images) to run. Most of the reports in FileCensus require selection of a single Scope or Image except for most of the Change reports which require selection of two Scopes for comparison.

Running a FileCensus Report

Selecting and running a FileCensus report for a single Scope can be broken into a few of steps (which are detailed in the following sections):

• Select the report you wish to run by clicking on the name of the report.

• Select a Scope.

• Enter report conditions (if required).

• Run the report.

Report Selection

After logging into FileCensus the Reports tab folder is the first view to be displayed. The list of available reports and roles for the current user are displayed across the view. Selecting a report requires a single mouse click on the name of the report to be run.

Scope Selection

After the report is selected the “Select Scope” view is displayed. The state of the Select Scope screen is persistent between each report selection, so any changes made on the Select Scope view will remain for the next report. There are two main areas on the Select Scope view, the Actions and Navigation box on the left, and the Scopes grid on the right. Each of these two areas is discussed in the following sections.

Actions and Navigation Box

The Actions and Navigation section has two areas, one for the Actions and one for the Navigation.

Actions Area

The Actions area has a Next button and an Options checkbox. If the Options checkbox is NOT checked then clicking on the Next button

will run the selected report. If the Options checkbox IS checked, clicking on the Next button will open the Select Option screen where a filter can be applied to the report when it runs.

Navigation Area

The Navigation area is used for displaying the hierarchy of the Scope path. As mentioned in Chapter 3, Page 28 - Scope Hierarchy, you potentially could have many levels of Scopes to select from. The Navigation area displays the levels of the Scopes and also allows to click on any of the displayed Scopes to jump back to that level in the hierarchy.

The image to the left shows an example of the Navigation area with several levels of Scopes being navigated through.

This example shows the Home Scope, which is always available, at the top of the hierarch. Clicking on “Home” will take you to the very top of the Scope levels and display all top level Scopes. The next Scope under “Home” is “Windows Drives”.

This scope has several sub-Scopes listing the volumes of “C”, “D”, and “E”. Here the “C” Scope has been selected. Notice that the lowest level of the hierarch is black while the upper levels are blue. The blue levels allow you to click on them to take you immediately to that level of the Scope and the Scopes Grid (see below) will display all of the Scopes at that level of the hierarchy. The black Scope is always the bottom level of the hierarchy (in this example the “C” Scope) because it does need to be selected as there are no Scopes displayed at this level.

Scopes Grid

The Scopes Grid display a list of all Scopes at each level of the Scope hierarchy. The default view for the grid is to display all Scopes at the

Home level. FileCensus comes with many pre-defined Scopes when

installed (see image below). All of the default Scopes (except the All Storage Scope) can be added to, deleted, or modified from the Administration section of FileCensus.

Each of these Scopes also has many predefined sub-Scopes as well. In the example screen shot below we have selected the “NetWare

Volumes” and then selected the “DATA” scope. You can see the

Navigation area displaying the hierarchy of the levels that we have navigated down.

Figure 3.2 Navigating the Scopes Grid

The Scopes grid has many defaults set for selecting Scopes and Images. Figure 3.1 (previous page) displays the Scope grid when only Scopes are available for selection. By clicking on radio button next to a Scope and then clicking on the Next button in the Actions area you will run the report for the select Scope.

If you want a sub-Scope or an individual image you need to click on the Scope’s name to drill into the Scope. This will display the list of sub-Scopes or images.

Figure 3.2 (above) shows the Scopes grid with a list of images displayed. When navigating through the Scope levels the Scope grid will always select the last level as the default selected Scope. This allows you to immediately click the next button to run the report with a selected Scope without having to navigate back up to the previous level.

Once a Scope or Image is identified for the report, clicking on the radio button next to the name will select the Scope/Image for the report. Clicking the Next button will run the report for the selected Scope/Image.

When Images are displayed on the Scope grid you also have the option to select the Latest or Oldest image if their is a history of Images collected for the server/volume. In Figure 3.2 there is only one Image for each of the servers/volumes so the Latest and Oldest Images are the same. This is the one situation where clicking on any of the radio buttons will select the same Image. When there is history for a server, these dates will be different and allow you to immediately select an old or new Image.

Default selected Scope

Image selection radio button _{Radio button for latest Image}

Image History

If a server/volume has had multiple scans over time their will be a collection of Images. By clicking on the Image name the Scopes grid will display a list of every date the Image was captured.

Figure 3.3 Image History in the Scopes Grid

The screen shot above shows four capture dates for the server. Any of these Images can be selected by clicking on the radio button next to the date and then clicking on the next button in the Actions area. The Drive Size and Drive Free space is also displayed on this screen to give you an overview of the size changes over time for the selected Image.

Image Paths

If you require to run a report against a path or directory of a server you can click on the Captured Date of the Image and you can navigate into the Image. The screen shot below shows the Scopes grid after navigating into the Windows path of the C drive of the server. By clicking on one of the radio buttons next to a path name and then clicking on the Next button in the Actions area, the selected report will be run only against the selected path.

Selecting Options

The Options checkbox is used to activate the Select Options view for the current report. By default the Options checkbox is unchecked, but it will remember its state, so if it is changed for a specific report the Scope selection screen will remember the state. If the checkbox is activated by clicking in the box, as soon as the Next button is clicked on, the Select Options view is displayed (see Chapter 3, Page 35

-Selecting Report Options and Chapter 3, Page 42 - Advanced Options).

Once the filter conditions have been entered, the “Run Report” button can be clicked on to run the current report with the current filter conditions being applied to the report. You also have the option of running the report without applying the filtering. Because the Select Options screen remembers the information you have entered for each report, you may want to run the report again without any conditions being applied. This allows you to return to the report and not lose any filter conditions you may have entered earlier.

Note on the Search report

The Search report requires Options to be entered before it will run. The Options button is checked on and cannot be unchecked.

Selecting Multiple Scopes

Selecting multiple scopes is performed in exactly the same manner as selecting single scopes (see Chapter 3, Page 29 - Selecting a Single

Scope) but is performed twice: once for the first scope and once for the

second scope.

Selecting and running a FileCensus report for a multiple scopes follows the same steps as selecting a single scope, with the addition of one new step:

• Select the report you wish to run by clicking on the name of the report.

• Select the first scope.

• Select the second scope.

• Enter report conditions (if required).

• Run the report.

The only difference between single scope and multiple scopes selection is the process of selecting a first and second scope.

Selecting Report Options

The Options screen is used to add filters to any of the FileCensus reports. Any of the attributes on a captured server can be filtered in a report.

The Options screen also holds report specific options such as changing date types on date reports, changing duplicate detection requirements on the Duplicates report, changing time frames for historical reports, and many more.

This means that the 25+ reports visible on the Reports folder of FileCensus is actually well over a 100 different reports. And when filters are added, the different number of reports that can be generated is almost limitless.

The Options screen has allows you to apply filters to a report on every metadata item associated with a files, directories, and users from a servers and volumes.

The Advanced section of the Options screen allows some very powerful commands to be entered, for example, running a report which shows where all modified dates are greater than the accessed dates. This simple statement shows some problems with some of the metadata on a server and that needs to be rectified immediately by an administrator.

Name

The Name section allows the selected report to be filtered by a part or whole of a file name.

By entering a text value into the box, FileCensus will try to match every file name in the selected report to the entered text. The text box allows the wildcards “*” and “?” to be entered. The asterisk is used to replace from one to any number of characters. The question mark is used to replace a single character.

List Box

To search for an exact piece of text click on the List box and select “Equals”. To search for name containing text, select the “Contains” option in the List box.

Not

If you check the “not” checkbox in the title, then the search will exclude all files that match the entered criteria.

More

Clicking on the “more” link will add another line to the Name box and allow another entry to be added and search on. Each time the

more link is clicked a new line will be added to the search filter. If the

line is left empty it will not be added to the filter. The less link is used to remove lines from the search filter. The Filter section will remember the information you type into the boxes and if you click on the less link and then later decide to add more filters, when you next click on the more link the information you entered earlier will be re-displayed.

Each line now has its own OR, AND and NOT options to link the multiple search conditions together. The example below show a search for all files with an extension of “*.mp3” AND all files with an extension of “*.mpg”. This will return no results because you cannot have a file match both conditions. The options should be an OR here for this report to find all files with an extension of mp3 or mpg.

Figure 3.6 File filter options

List box for “Equals” or

Text entry box Check this box to activate activate the NOT feature

“Contains” option Click the “more” link to addmore text searches by name

OR & AND options

File Examples

If you wanted to find all occurrences of the file “my_file.txt”, you would enter “my_file.txt” (without the quotes) into the text box and run the report with the Equals option. If you selected the Contains option, the actual search would look for “*my_file.txt*” so the returned results would look for all files containing the entered text as well as the “my_file.txt” file.

If you could not remember the exact name of the file you wanted to find, but you knew it was a text file, you could enter “*.txt” into the text box. This would return all files with the file extension of “txt”. This search could produce a lot of files on the report results page. To help reduce the number of files returned, perhaps you remembered that the file started with “my” and was a text file. You could enter “my*.txt” which would hopefully filter the search results even more.

Path

The Path section allows the selected report to be filtered by a part or whole of a path name.

By entering a text value into the box, FileCensus will try to match every path name in the selected report to the entered text. Path names use the “slash” (forward or backward slash) to qualify the path name. The Path filter works the same way as the Name filter option above by using the Equals and Contains options in the List box (see Chapter 3,

Page 36 - Name for more details on the List box).

If you check the “not” checkbox in the title, then the search will exclude all results where the path matches the entered criteria.

Path Examples

Entering “\winnt\system32” (which is internally changed to “\winnt\ system32*”) would return files in the “\winnt\system32” directory and all of its’ sub-directories.

By adding a slash at the end of the search, making the search “\winnt\ system32\”, we change the criteria of the search to only return files in that are in the “system32” directory.

Entering “program*” will not work because of the rules associated with wildcards. Because a wildcard has been entered in the path name, the FileCensus behavior of turning off all of the default wildcards will mean that the search will not recognize the path because there is no slash to indicate that the name is a path. The search will work if we place a slash at the beginning of the text, making it “\program*”, then we would get results for directories on the root of the drive that begin with “program”. If we replaced the slash with a “*”, making it “*program*”, we would find all directories on the server that have the word program in them.

You can also perform some powerful searches like “\w*\system*”. This search will find all directories that start with the word “system” that have a directory which starts with the letter “w” as it parent. One of the results would be the “\winnt\system32” directory.

Note on Path Name searches

Any path you are searching for must have a least one file in the path for it to be returned from that search.

Size

The Size section allows the selected report to be filtered by a byte value.

Figure 3.7 Size filter options

The first part of the Size section allows selection of the Size or Space. Size is recorded size of the file and Space is the actual size of the file on disk. Sometimes the Space value will be smaller because of system compression of files or if the file is a link file. You can search on either value.

The “At Least” and “At Most” options allow you designate the lower and upper boundaries of the file size.

The next field is a text box which allows entry of a number for the size of the file.

The Byte size list box allows selection of what size the file will be: Bytes, Kilobytes, Megabytes, etc.

The OR, AND, and NOT options are the same as the Name section. Please see Chapter 3, Page 36 - Name for more details on these options.

Size Examples

The picture above displays an example filter of a search which will look for all files of at least 1MB in size and no larger than 10MB.

Date

The Date section allows the selected report to be filtered by the Accessed, Modified, and Created date values of a file.

Figure 3.8 Date filter options

The first part of the Date section allows selection of the date type, either Accessed, Created, or Modified dates (if the operating system supports these).

OR & AND options Size or Space

“At Least” or “At Most” Enter the Number

Select the Byte Size More and Less links

Date Comparison

Date type Enter the Number

The number is entered in the next text box. This is the value which will be used to determine the number of minutes, days, months, etc. (selected from the Date scale list box) when comparing the date type. The Date scale list box allows selection of which scale the date is to compared on. This list box contains:

• Minutes • Hours • Days • Weeks • Months • Years

The Date comparison list box contains a list of points in time that the previously entered information will be compared against. This list contains: • Scan time • Today • Yesterday • 1 Week Ago • Accessed Date • Created Date • Modified Date

The OR, AND, and NOT options are the same as the Name section. Please see Chapter 3, Page 36 - Name for more details on these options.

Date Examples

The figure above displays an example date filter of a search which will look for all files NOT Accessed within 6 months of scan time. The NOT option is important in this example as we want to find all files which have not been accessed in quite some time. This type of report is useful for identifying files which can be migrated to tape, other tiers of storage, or migrated to an HSM system.

Type

The Types section allows quick selection of a file type from one or more of the FileCensus Profiles to help filter a search by file types. A Profile is a collection of one or more user definable file extensions which are used to filter data displayed on the FileCensus reports (see

Chapter 6, Page 97 - Types).

If you just select a Profile without entering any text in the file name text box then you will get every file with the extensions listed in the Profile in the search results.

Type Examples

Entering “test*” into the Name filter section and then selecting the Profile “Pictures” (a default FileCensus Profile entry) and then running the report will return all files that start with the word “test” and have an extension of gif, bmp, jpg, jpeg, tif, or png. Don’t forget that you can modify the Profiles to add your own file types into the list. So if you had created an image file and could not remember if you saved it as a gif, jpg, or bmp, by clicking one button in the types section and then running the report, you can search them all.

User

The User filter section is where you can filter the report by the User or or Group which owns a file. The User filter options are used to find files based on User or Group ownership.

Figure 3.9 User filter options

The first part of the User filter area is the Owner selection box. At the moment the only option is to select the Owner.

The second part of the area is a list box used to select either “Is Named” for selecting individual user names, or “In Group” for identifying files by group ownership.

The text box is used to enter in the text description of either the individual user or the group.

Once the “more” link is clicked on the OR, AND, and NOT options displayed are the same as the Name section. Please see Chapter 3, Page

36 - Name for more details on these options.

User Examples

The example in the figure above shows all files from the owner named “*mlm” will be search. Wildcards such as the “*” and “?” can be used in the text box help widen searches for users and groups.

Attributes

The Attributes filter section is where you can filter the report by the attributes of a file.

Figure 3.10 Attributes filter options

The first section of the Attributes filter options allows the selection of “Is” or “Has” options. Selecting the “Is” option will only return files that match the selected attributes exactly. Selecting the “Has” option will return any files which have at least the selected attributes but possibly other attributes as well.

Owner selection

Named or Group selection

Text box More and Less links

Is or Has option

List of Attributes (windows environment shown)

The Attributes list displays a line of all of the Attributes available for the operating system (OS) of the images in the selected Scope. This list will vary depending on what OS was selected.

Attributes Example

Selecting the “Has” option in the first list box of Attributes area will allow us to return files that have the selected attributes at the minimum.

Clicking on the “A” checkbox in the list of Attributes area will identify the Archive attribute of the file.

Clicking on the “With Filter” button in the Run Report section will run the report and look for all files which at minimum have the Archive attribute active.

Advanced Options

The Advanced section has a text box which allows text statements to be entered which can perform all of the functions of the previous Filter sections and more. The condition statements have more functions than the standard sections and the ability for far more control over the filtering of the report results. The following sections detail the common syntax and the keywords required to run condition statements.

Operators

Operators are a group of symbols and words that are used for evaluating single or multiple statements made up of keywords and values.

Keywords are the FileCensus words used to describe various report columns, such as Name and Size. A value can be any text, number, or date that the report needs to be filtered by. There are two types of operators in FileCensus: relational and conditional. Each of these operators is discussed in the following sections.

Relational

Relational operators are used to compare a keyword and value. An example format for a statement which uses a keyword followed by a relational operator, and then a value, is as follows:

The following table details the Relational Operators used in FileCensus and some examples of how the operators would be used in statements.

Keyword Operator Value

name = “myfile.txt”

Operator Use Example

= keyword = value name = “myfile.txt” > keyword > value size > 12MB < keyword < value size < 10B >= keyword >= value modified >= 2000 11 20 <= keyword <= value size <=10KB

is keyword is value attributes is ro has keyword has value, value attributes has ro, a

on keyword on value modified on tuesday within keyword within value modified within 10 days

Conditional

Conditional Operators are used to allow more than one statement to be applied to search conditions, although the “not” operator can be used on single statements.

Generally speaking, the operators “and” and “not” will narrow the scope of a search, while the operator “or” will broaden the scope.

And

The “and” operator is used to ensure that each statement must be meet before the result is displayed on a report.

Or

The “or” operator is used to ensure that either statement can be meet for the result to be displayed on a report.

Not

The “not” operator is used to ensure the statement must not be meet for a result to be displayed on a report.

Syntax statement 1 AND statement 2

Example name = “*.exe” AND modified > 2000 11 20

Result Only files which have a file extension of “exe” and were modified after the 20th November 2000 will be displayed on the report

Syntax statement 1 OR statement 2

Example name = “*.exe” OR name = “*.bat”

Result Files which have a file extension of “exe” or files which have an extension of “bat” will be displayed on a report

Syntax statement 1 AND NOT statement 2

Example name = “*.ex?” AND NOT name = “*.exe”

Result Files which have a file extension starting with “ex” but not files which have an extension of “exe” will be displayed on the report

Wildcards

There are two wildcard symbols in FileCensus. The asterisk and the question mark (“*” and “?”).

* (Asterisk)

The “*” symbol stands for any combination of zero or more characters. For example entering “m*” would match all files which begin with the letter “m”. The wildcard can also be entered in the middle of a search value, for example “m*.doc” would match all files which start with the letter “m” and end with the letters “.doc”.

? (Question Mark)

The “?” symbol stands for any single character. For example entering “???.doc” would match files which end in “.doc” and start with only three letters.

# (Hash)

The “#” symbol functions the same as the asterisk (“*”) when used as a wildcard, but the main difference is the hash symbol will not match back-slashes (“\”).

[abc] (Square Brackets)

Square brackets with letters in between will perform an “or” operation on the letters. For example, “[abc]” will search for “a” or “b” or “c”.

[^abc]

Square brackets with letters in between and beginning with a carat (“^”) will perform a “not or” operation on the letters. For example, “[^abc]” will search for NOT “a” or “b” or “c”.

[*]

Square brackets with a wildcard character in between will search for that character in the name. For example, “[*]” will search for the asterisk character (“*”) in the name.

[[]

Square brackets with a square bracket character in between will search for that character in the name. For example, “[[]” will search for the left square bracket (“[”) in the name.