File Stores

The File Stores tab displays only when you have the administrator privileges.

Create a filesystem

A filesystem is a logical file location, which reads and writes from a single store. Click the File Stores tab. Right-click a random record and select Create FileSystem.... Type the name in the Create FileSystem dialog and click OK. Your new filesystem will display in the Repository Tree.

A file store is a physical file location. It might be on your local disk, on a server, or in an Amazon cloud. One file store may support multiple filesystems. To create a file store, you should have the domain administrator privileges. Refer to Working with the Domain Manager.

Create a filesystem snapshot

Administrators have an option to create a snapshot of a filesystem. Different from backup and restore, which keeps a physical copy of the filesystem state typically for long-term use, the snapshot enables the store to hold filesystem information typically for short-term use.

Follow the syntax below to create a snapshot of a filesystem:

./elx-snapshot-create.sh <domain> <user> <password> <snapshot-name> 
 <filesystem>

The following shows an example:

cd /opt/elixir/dacapo/
./elx-snapshot-create.sh eno admin sa mysnap ElixirSamples

After some changes have been made, for example, adding files, removing files, editing file contents and changing access rights, you can restore the snapshot using the following command lines, which will undo all changes since the snapshot is taken. Be sure to use the consistent snapshot name:

cd /opt/elixir/dacapo/
./elx-snapshot-restore.sh eno admin sa mysnap ElixirSamples

Compact a store

Compact will remove physical data from storage which is no longer referenced. For example, if you have three files with the same contents, we only store the contents once on disk - all three logical files share it. If you delete one of the logical files, the other two still share the physical data. If you delete both of those logical files, then the physical data is now no longer referenced and can be compacted.

To remove unreferenced data and release storage room, click the File Stores tab. Right-click the target store and select Compact. A message pops up, indicating that the the store is successfully compacted. Click OK.

Note

If a filesystem is compacted, a snapshot that depends on the removed files cannot be successfully restored.