Installing and Configuring RBS on SharePoint 2010?

Question

We have a content DB with more than 120GB of data, it consists mostly documents and would like to introduce RBS to reduce size on the SQL server.

Have installed and Configured RBS on SharePoint 2010 test environment which has a SharePoint server and SQL server.

However in the production, we have 2WFEs, 2Apps and SQL server, request you to help me with sequence of command execution.

On Dev:
1. Enabled FILESTREAM on the database server
2. Executed the following SQL command

EXEC sp_configure filestream_access_level, 2
RECONFIGURE

3.Provisioned BLOB store on the SQL server

use [WSS_Content]
if not exists (select * from sys.symmetric_keys where name = N'##MS_DatabaseMasterKey##')create master key encryption by password = N'Admin Key Password !2#4'

use [WSS_Content]
if not exists (select groupname from sysfilegroups where groupname=N'RBSFilestreamProvider')alter database [WSS_Content] add filegroup RBSFilestreamProvider contains filestream

use [WSS_Content]
alter database [WSS_Content] add file (name = RBSFilestreamFile, filename = 'C:\Blobstore') to filegroup RBSFilestreamProvider

4. Installed the RBS client component on the SharePoint server

msiexec /qn /lvx* rbs_install_log.txt /i RBS.msi TRUSTSERVERCERTIFICATE=true FILEGROUP=PRIMARY DBNAME="WSS_Content" DBINSTANCE="DBInstance Name" FILESTREAMFILEGROUP=RBSFilestreamProvider FILESTREAMSTORENAME=FilestreamProvider_1<br/>

5. Enabled RBS for the Content Database from Web Server

  $cdb = Get-SPContentDatabase –WebApplication  <URL>
  $rbss = $cdb.RemoteBlobStorageSettings
  $rbss.Installed()
  $rbss.Enable()
  $rbss.SetActiveProviderName($rbss.GetProviderNames()[0])<br/>

6. Adjusted the Blob Threshold

$cdb = Get-SPContentDatabase –WebApplication <URL>
$cdb.RemoteBlobStorageSettings.MinimumBlobStorageSize=1048576 
$cdb.Update()<br/>

7. Moved Content into RBS

$cdb = Get-SPContentDatabase –WebApplication <URL>
$rbss = $cdb.RemoteBlobStorageSettings
$rbss.Migrate()<br/>

When should I install RBS and configure on all the additional Web and application servers ? I hope that I can use the same RBS client component to install on the additional servers and run the below command between step 4 and 5.

msiexec /qn /lvx* rbs_install_log.txt /i RBS.msi DBNAME="WSS_Content" DBINSTANCE="DBInstance Name" ADDLOCAL="Client,Docs,Maintainer,ServerScript,FilestreamClient,FilestreamServer"

Answer 1

I would start out by taking a look at these links:

• http://www.toddklindt.com/blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=174
• http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee663474(v=office.14).aspx
• I also took a stab at a few RBS-related articles here: http://www.andrewjbillings.com/tag/rbs/

You run step 4 on the first web server and then this command on ALL other servers in the SharePoint farm:

msiexec /qn /lvx* rbs_install_log.txt /i RBS.msi DBNAME="WSS_Content" DBINSTANCE="DBInstanceName" ADDLOCAL=Client,Docs,Maintainer,ServerScript,FilestreamClient,FilestreamServer

I would read this article about planning for RBS to make sure that it makes sense in this case: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff628569(v=office.14).aspx

RBS just externalizes your data so it does not do anything additional with versioning. If you are on SharePoint 2013 you will already be taking advantage of shredded storage which helps reduce the size of versioning in your SharePoint content databases. http://blogs.technet.com/b/wbaer/archive/2012/11/12/introduction-to-shredded-storage-in-sharepoint-2013.aspx

The Filestream/RBS data can be included in your SQL backups using a similar method to this: http://www.mssqltips.com/sqlservertip/1854/how-to-backup-and-restore-a-sql-server-filestream-enabled-database/

I have also seen some success with tools for SharePoint RBS such as these:

• http://www.metalogix.com/Products/StoragePoint/StoragePoint-BLOB-Offloading.aspx
• http://www.avepoint.com/sharepoint-storage-manager-docave/

These tools provide a little more flexibility than the Filestream RBS Provider.

Answer 2

Repeat Step 4 on each server then continue.