Installing and Configuring Remote BLOB Storage

I’m sure you realize that nothing is perfect. That includes Microsoft SQL Server, and even if

you believe it’s the best database server in the world, it can still get overloaded and crowded

with data. It also doesn’t deal as well with unstructured binary files as it does with structured

data, and a lot of data is unstructured in binary large object (BLOB) files. If only there were

some way of using an external data store to contain those binary data files for SharePoint.

Now there is.

Installing and configuring Remote BLOB Storage (RBS) lets you store your BLOB data

with an EBS provider so that both your structured and unstructured data is being placed

in, housed in, and retrieved from the optimal storage types for those data forms.

This doesn’t mean that you absolutely must use RBS, and you certainly can store your

unstructured data files in SQL, but it’s not the best solution available, particularly if data

access and retrieval is important, and it almost always is. Although setting up RBS may be

more work, it often is worth the effort. If you choose to employ the RBS option, you face

three basic tasks:

1.

Enabling the FILESTREAM and provisioning the RBS data store

2.

Installing the RBS

3.

RBS is a library application programming interface (API). It’s integrated as an add-on

feature for both Microsoft SQL Server 2008 and Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Express and

is designed to move BLOB data stored on database servers to what is called

storage solutions

provider, which uses the RBS APIs to store BLOBs.

This work is done on Microsoft SQL Server, and as a SharePoint administrator, you may

not have a hand in performing the following tasks. However, since this feature is tied directly

to SharePoint Server 2010, the information is presented, and in a small enough company or in

a large company with limited IT resources, you may need to have these skills.

The following tasks require that you belong to the Administrators group for all the web

servers and application servers in the server farm. You must also belong to the dbcreator

and securityadmin fixed server roles on the computer running SQL Server 2008 or SQL

Server 2008 Express.

Enabling the FILESTREAM and Provisioning the RBS Data Store

The first task you must perform is to enable

FILESTREAM on the SQL Server instance:

1.

appears, click Microsoft SQL Server 2008.

On the computer running SQL Server, click Start  All Programs; in the list that

2.

Manager.

In the list that appears, click Configuration Tools and then click SQL Server Configuration

3.

and then click Properties.

4.

the Enable FILESTREAM For Transact-SQL Access check box.

In the SQL Server Properties dialog box, click the FILESTREAM tab and then select

5.

the Windows share in the Windows Share Name field if you want to read and write

FILESTREAM data from Windows.

Click Enable FILESTREAM for file I/O streaming access and then enter the name of

6.

remote clients are required to access FILESTREAM data on the share.

Select Allow Remote Clients To Have Streaming Access To FILESTREAM Data if

7.

Click Apply.

8.

Management Studio.

Click Start  All Programs  Microsoft SQL Server and then select SQL Server

9.

In SQL Server Management Studio, click New Query to open the Query Editor.

10.

In the Query Editor, enter the following and then click Execute:

EXEC sp_configure filestream_access_level, 2

RECONFIGURE[

Now that FILESTREAM is enabled, you need to provision the BLOB store in SQL Server:

1.

step 8 of the previous task and then expand Databases.

On the SQL Server instance, open the SQL Server Management Studio as shown in

2.

New Query.

Select the content database for which you want to create the BLOB store and then click

3.

you see here. You must replace

replace In the Query pane, enter and execute each of the following SQL queries in the sequence[WSS_Content] with the actual content database name andc:\BLOBStore with the volume/directory where you want the BLOB store created.In the SQL Server Configuration Manager, locate the desired SQL Server, right-click it,Enabling and testing the RBScommodityor third-party RBS storage. RBS comes with the RBS FILESTREAM