Related links

  • RBS FILESTREAM and other BLOB Remoting Approaches

  • SharePoint RBS FILESTREAM 

    The RBS FILESTREAM provider that is available as a free download was created to provide an upgrade path for customers running Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 with the Windows Internal Database Engine (WIDE).

    SharePoint Foundation deployments running on SQL Server 2008 Express are limited to 4GB in total therefore making upgrades from WSS 3.0 with WIDE impossible (assuming you have a content database that is larger than 4GB). The RBS FILESTREAM provider gives these customers an upgrade path. Customers looking for a BLOB management solution should use caution when considering the RBS FILESTREAM provider as it was not built as an enterprise class solution.

    Below is a feature comparison between the RBS FILESTREAM provider and StoragePoint.

    Learn more about StoragePoint 

    Core Function Examples  FILESTREAM  StoragePoint 
    BLOB Externalization Yes Yes
    Removes BLOB I/O burden from SQL Server No - will be slower than storing BLOBs in the database Yes
    Remote BLOBs to File Shares No - can only place BLOBs in the same location as your data files on SQL Server Yes
    Administration User Interface No Yes
    Compression No Yes
    Encryption No Yes
    Ability to leverage policy based storage platforms No Yes
    Cloud storage support No Yes
    Tiered Storage Support No Yes
    Hierarchical Storage No Yes
    Garbage Collection Yes - Basic Yes
    Advanced
    File Shreding No Yes

    References 

    The following sites provide information about the RBS FILESTREAM provider including limitations to the solution.

    Learn more about StoragePoint 

  • Overall Considerations 

    • Can I live without or do I want to build an Administration UI?
    • Do I want to maintain it across SharePoint and SQL service packs?
    • Do I want to build my own monitoring and reporting tools?
    • How am I going to handle backup and recovery or replication?
    • Do I need or want the ability to tier storage by age or change in state?
    • Will I need to encrypt the BLOBs?
    • Will OOB garbage collector and migrate jobs perform well in my environment?
    • Do I need or want to build platform-specific connectors

    Stubbing Methods
    (i.e. HTML Placeholders or redirects)     

    • They break a a significant level of SharePoint functionality
    • Passive vs. Active function
    • BLOBs are inserted in Database then removed
    • Creates significant Fragmentation in database tables
    • SharePoint Crawler grabs HTML placeholder, not BLOB
    • 3rd party SharePoint solutions using OM won’t work (i.e. anything using SPFile.OpenBinary)
    • Generally lowers SharePoint performance

    Native SharePoint EBS
    (External BLOB Store) API     

    • Introduced with WSS 3.0 SP1, supported (currently deprecated) in SharePoint 2010
    • Very little documentation for COM interface
    • Natively implemented as a Farm-wide scoped feature; all BLOBs are remoted
    • No orphaned BLOB garbage collection
    • Significant Development/Trial&Error effort required for a production-level solution

    Native SQL RBS (Remote BLOB Store) API 

    • Capability of SQL 2008, only supported in SharePoint 2010
    • Well documented .NET interface
    • Natively implemented as a content database scoped feature
    • Orphaned BLOB garbage collection present OOB
    • Significant Development effort required for a production-level solution

    Learn more about StoragePoint