Storage Management

MSAdmin provides a system administrator with tools to define how and where Monarch Server compresses and stores reports. How and where those reports are stored has a direct impact on the overall speed and flexibility of the system.

Reports put into the Monarch Server system are stored in logical storage bins referred to as storage groups. All data in a storage group is stored together, so keep this in mind when establishing these groups. You may want to store all accounting reports in one storage group and all personnel reports in another. All reports having the same retrieval requirements might be stored together. Or, you may want to store all reports in a single storage group. Each organization will have different requirements based on its specific company policies and procedures.

Each storage group may be composed of several storage volumes, each volume having a specific, user-defined size. You may create several copies of each volume, each copy with its own physical location. A single storage group is actually a volume set, and each volume set includes multiple sub-volumes.

Volumes are used as a means of segmenting the increasing number of stored reports in a storage group. Segmenting the number of stored documents into smaller, more manageable pieces facilitates the migration of older data to nearline or offline storage media.

Each volume contains at least one copy. This copy is where the compressed report files that have been processed by Monarch Server are recorded initially. Additional copies may be recorded to other storage locations for data redundancy and long-term archival purposes.

Each storage group contains a set of volumes of the First Copy or Second Copy. When creating a storage group, the sub-volume size is defined. All the files for the current storage group will be grouped by sub-volumes, each of which will have the fixed maximum size defined by a storage group.

A storage group is also defined by such term as current sub-volume. This is the sub-volume all the new files are created on. If the current sub-volume is completed (or reaches the maximum size), it is closed and a new sub-volume is created. It becomes the current sub-volume. A new sub-volume may be created on any volume with the same type (First Copy or Second Copy), which is contained in the storage group. The system chooses the first volume, which has enough space for creating another full sub-volume.

For more information about storage groups, see Storage Groups.

For more information about storage volumes, see Storage Volumes.