Business Background
After initially running inventories with File Archiver, they
leveraged the reporting engine (File Analyzer) to review their data.
They found some mapping files that were up to 125 GB and tons
of large files. When looking at the duplicates they found around
400,000 duplicate files. Knowing that users aren’t proactive about
managing files in their own shares or department shares, they
wanted to implement a solution that automatically moved data to
lower tier storage. They invested in a 20 TB Synology NAS
(cost around $3,000) that would serve as their archive for a long
time to come.
They implemented a simple stubbing policy to stub files older
than 2 years for the top 10 file types to lower tier storage.
The USGS is a science organization that provides impartial
information on the health of our ecosystems and environment,
the natural hazards that threaten us, the natural resources we
rely on, the impacts of climate and land-use change, and the
core science systems that help us provide timely, relevant, and
useable information.

The Solution
U.S. Geological Survey/photo by JLisamarie Windham-Myers , USGS
Credit: U.S. Geological Survey Department of the Interior/USGS

The Results
After implementing this policy they found an over 50 % reduction
in the size of their shares from 3 TB to around 1.2 TB. After this
reducion, their back-up window went to around 36 hours. It starts
on Friday and finishes on Sunday morning. This allowed them to
breath easier because they weren’t concerned about conflicts with
users hitting files on Monday and the back-up still running. They
don’t have to worry about limiting access to files and enjoy the
automated approach file archiver offers. Restoring files is very fast
and gives them and very efficient way of managing data.