Configuring Content Management

As you learned in Module 1, “Introducing SharePoint 2010,” one of the six capabilities of Microsoft® SharePoint® 2010 is content. After you have built your SharePoint farm and the logical components of SharePoint—Web applications, site collections, sites, lists, and libraries—your users will begin to populate SharePoint with content.

Although many content management features of SharePoint 2010 are considered end-user features, and are therefore out of scope for this course, several features warrant coverage because they require configuration by farm, service application, and site collection administrators: list throttling, remote binary large object (BLOB) storage (RBS), site content types and columns, and managed metadata service applications.

Lesson 1

Optimizing Content Storage and Access

In this lesson, you explore the administrative tasks related to lists and libraries, the two most important containers for content in sites. You then learn about two important new features of SharePoint Server 2010 with which you can better manage and govern both the performance and storage of SharePoint content: list throttling and RBS.

After completing this lesson, you will be able to:

• Describe the content structure in a site collection.

• Configure and optimize the performance of large lists.

• Configure and manage storage of document libraries.

Lists and Libraries

In Module 2, “Creating a SharePoint 2010 Intranet,” you examined a diagram of the logical hierarchy of SharePoint. A piece of that diagram, shown in the slide, illustrates the hierarchical structure of content-related objects in a SharePoint farm:

In a site collection, content is collected into lists and document libraries, also called, simply, libraries. Lists are collections of items, which can optionally be grouped in folders. Libraries are a specialized form of list designed to hold files, called documents, which can also be grouped in folders.

Create a List or Library

The steps to create a list or library are straightforward and well documented. But it is important that you create a document library or list that is easy to find, with a user-friendly URL, and navigation hooks so that users can quickly browse to locate the list or library.

1. Determine an easy, user-friendly URL.Users read and sometimes type the URL to a list or library, so it should be easy to read, remember, and type. Use the following best practices when determining the URL for a list or library:

• Use a consistent style of capitalization, such as MixedCase. Although Internet Information Services (IIS) Web site addresses are not case sensitive, thoughtful use of capitalization can create a consistent environment and can facilitate readability. Some

organizations use a standard of all-lowercase URLs; however, mixed-case URLs, such as HumanResources, are more popular because they provide readability for multiword URLs.

• Keep URLs short. A shorter URL is easier to remember and type.Additionally, remember that URLs are limited in length, to 260 characters, so short URLs reduce the risk of overrunning that limit for content nested in this list or library.

• Avoid spaces. Spaces in URLs are escaped by browsers and become %20, for example, http://intranet.contoso.com/Shared%20Documents. The escaped space is difficult to read and interpret and can be problematic in certain access scenarios. Avoid spaces in your URLs.

2. When creating the list or library, configure the Name field to be the URL.

When you create a list or library in the user interface, you are prompted to enter a value for the Name. Unfortunately, the value you enter in the Name box is used to create the Tile and the URL of the list or library. If you use bad practices—for example, if you include a space in the Name—the space becomes part of the URL.

The URL is somewhat challenging to change after it has been created—you must use Windows PowerShell® or SharePoint Designer to change it. The name can easily be changed.

Therefore, follow these steps when creating a list or library:

1. Configure the Name so that the result is a URL that follows the rules discussed previously.

2. Do not add the list or library to the Quick Launch when creating the list or library.

3. After creating the list or library, change the Title.

Immediately after creating the list or library, navigate to the List Settings or Library Settings page and click Title, Description And Navigation. Enter a value for the Name. In this interface, the name is used only for the list or library Title property, not for the URL. Therefore, you can use any name—including a long name with spaces—and thereby configure navigation controls such as the Quick Launch and navigation breadcrumb to display a more descriptive, viewer-friendly name.

4. Configure list and library settings.

When you create a list or library, you should consider the following:

• Enforce check-out. For document libraries, it is highly recommended to enforce check out if users have the ability to modify documents in the library. Click the Versioning link on the Library Settings page.

• Consider versioning and approval. Consider implementing versioning and approval based on the business requirements for the list or library.Click the Versioning link on the Library Settings page.

• Add columns. To modify the metadata of a list or library, add list columns. First, check to see whether an existing site column meets your needs and, if so, add the site column to the list. Otherwise, create a new column.

Manage Navigation to Lists and Libraries

Users can type the URL to a list or library to navigate to it, but as the administrator of a SharePoint environment, you should ensure that there are easier options for users to navigate to commonly used lists, libraries, and sites.

Deploy Favorites Using Group Policy Preferences

Users can navigate to a site, list, or library by using Windows® Internet Explorer®. Of course, a user can add the location as a Favorite manually. But you can also deploy, or “push,” Favorites into users’ Internet Explorer Favorites.

Use Group Policy Preferences to deploy Favorites. Group Policy Preferences is a component of Group Policy, and therefore of Active Directory® Domain Services (AD DS). The details of how to configure preferences are beyond the scope of this course, but you can find information in the resources listed under Additional Reading.

The following graphic shows a Group Policy shortcut properties setting that is configured to create a link to the Special Projects document library on the consulting site:

The configuration elements of the properties are the following:

• Action: The Update action creates a Favorite if one does not exist and updates the Favorite if it has changed.

• Name: The Name is the user-friendly name of the Favorite, as it will appear in the user’s Favorites folder. Using the foldername\Favorites Name format creates a folder in the Favorites folder. In the preceding figure, a folder named SharePoint Sites is created or updated with a Favorite called Consulting Special Projects.

• Target Type: This is URL.

• Location: Explorer Favorites.

• Target URL: The URL for the SharePoint content.

Additional Reading• “Deploying Shortcuts and Favorites to SharePoint Sites” athttp://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=197205&clcid=0x409.

Deploy Network Locations for Quick Access to SharePoint Sites UsingWindows Explorer

Users don’t always access SharePoint libraries by using Internet Explorer. They also navigate to libraries when opening and saving documents from Microsoft Office client applications and other SharePoint-aware applications.

You should make it easier for users to navigate to commonly used libraries when they are using Windows Explorer interfaces, including Open and Save dialogs.

The Windows Vista® operating system and later clients provide such functionality using network locations. A network location is a node in the Windows Explorer interface that behaves like a mapped drive but that has a name rather than a drive letter.

To create a network location, complete the following steps:

1. Open the Computer folder.

2. Right-click in a blank area of the window, and then click Add a Network Location.

3. Complete the wizard by providing a path to the library and a user-friendly name for the network location.

After you create a network location, you can navigate to the library from the Computer folder. The network location appears in the Network Locations folder. In the Open and Save dialogs, click Computer in the Favorite Links bar.

It is easy to deploy network locations to users as long as you know that a network location is a collection of objects in a folder in the following path: %appdata%\Microsoft\Windows\Network Shortcuts, for example, c:\users\username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Network Shortcuts.

You can copy network locations that you have created to a shared folder on the network, and then copy the network locations to the Network Shortcuts folders of other users’ profiles. You can use Robocopy.exe in a logon script, for example, to update users’ Network Shortcuts folders.

The Windows XP® operating system provides identical functionality using network places. Network places are created in the Network Places folder, instead of the Computer folder. They are stored in %userprofile%\NetHood. You can copy network places created on one Windows XP system into the NetHood folder of other Windows XP user profiles. Unfortunately, you cannot copy Windows XP network places to a client running Windows Vista or later operating system, and you cannot copy network places to a Windows XP client.

What Is New in Lists and Libraries?

SharePoint 2010 lists expose important functionality that was not available in previous versions of SharePoint:

• Large lists. SharePoint 2010 lists are supported for up to 50 million items.This is possible because of performance enhancements and new features such as multicolumn lists.

• Multicolumn indexes. You can create an index that contains more than one column.

• List relationships. SharePoint 2010 lists support relationships. Related lists can enforce referential integrity—both cascade delete and prevent delete. For example, if you have a list of customers that is related to a list of orders, you can configure SharePoint so that you cannot delete a customer for whom orders exists (prevent delete) or so that when you delete a customer, related orders are deleted (cascade delete).

Related lists also support projected fields. These are fields from the parent list that can be shown on the child list. For example, an order item that is related to a customer item can display the customer’s name, address, email address, and telephone number.

• Data validation. You can perform simple data validation in an out of box SharePoint list. A list column can have data validation, which ensures that a column’s value meets specified rules. A list can also have unique columns, which ensures that no two items have the same value in the columns. For example, you can set the email address column of a contacts list to be unique so that no two contacts are created with identical email addresses.

• Document sets. A Document set is a collection of documents with its own metadata and versions. With Document sets, you can manage an entire collection of documents, worksheets, presentations, or other types of document content as an entire end-to-end work product.

Metadata is applied to each document in a Document set, and additional metadata is applied to the Document set as a whole. For documents inside of a Document set, administrators can select columns that they want marked as read-only. The property can be edited only on the Document set. Any changes to the column that are marked as read-only are applied to all of the documentsinside.

A Document set includes a Welcome page that acts as a customizable home page for the Document set, displaying the properties of the Document set.

Document sets support templates and versioning. You can create templates in Microsoft Visual Studio® 2010. Versioning makes it possible to capture the state of the Document set at different points in its life cycle, view its history, and restore previous versions of the Document set.

• Content organizer. The content organizer uses an advanced routing engine and administrator-defined routing rules to route documents from a drop library to a specific location, based on document metadata, and can apply metadata automatically to a document based on its location.

• Digital asset management. SharePoint lists now provide capabilities for managing audio, video, and image content types.

• Document IDs. The Document ID service is a new feature at the site-collection level that adds a unique identifier (ID) to all documents throughout the site collection. This feature enables retrieval of documents by document ID regardless of their current or future location.

• Location-based metadata defaults. Library administrators can specify different default column values for each folder in a document library.

• Metadata navigation and filtering. Metadata navigation creates a folder hierarchy based on metadata. Each folder is effectively a filter. This provides a dynamic and effective way for users to discover documents. Filtering produces a multiselect list of filters based on metadata values that allow users to filter a view further.

Additional Reading• “What's New: List Enhancements” at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=197206&clcid=0x409.

Large Lists

SharePoint 2010 can handle tens of millions of items in a list or library. However, operations involving large numbers of items can reduce performance, limit access to data, and cause timeouts.

Examples of such operations include the following:

• Query with no item limit

• Query with a filter or sort on a column that is not indexed

• Deleting large lists or sites with large lists

• Adding a column to a large list

SharePoint 2010 introduces large list throttling, which protects a SharePoint farm and users accessing the farm from the effects of large operations by other users.

Configuring List Throttling

To configure list throttling, complete the following steps:1. In Central Administration, in the Application Management section, clickManage web applications.

The Web Applications Management page opens.

2. Click the Web application for which you want to configure list throttling.

3. On the ribbon, click the General Settings drop-down arrow, and then click Resource Throttling.The Resource Throttling page opens.

It is important to understand the following points about list throttling:

• List throttling is enabled and configured per Web application in Central Administration.• If list throttling is enabled at the Web application level, you can enable or disable throttling per list through the object model. Lists and libraries have an EnableThrottling property.

• List throttling is configured separately for what is done in the user interface versus what is done using the object model.

• List throttling is applied differently depending on whether the user is a typical user or a super user.

List Throttling Settings

The following graphic shows the list throttling settings on the Resource Throttling page.

The most commonly configured settings are as follows:

• List View Threshold. This value configures the maximum number of items that can be queried by standard users.

The default is 5,000 items. It is strongly recommended that you do not change this default. If poor-performing queries are used on lists with more than 5,000 items, overall throughput may significantly decrease when raising this limit.

• Object Model Override. You can apply a second level of throttling to super users. The override allows a super user to retrieve a larger number of items. To configure super user override, you must configure both of the following:

• List View Threshold For Auditors And Administrators. This value configures the maximum number of items that can be queried by super users. The default is 20,000 items.

• Object Model Override. This option specifies that the list view threshold for auditors and administrators is in effect. Super user override does not allow large list views—access must be through the object model. Developers can set the QueryThrottleMode property of SPQuery

and SPSiteDataQuery objects to retrieve up to the number of items specified in the list view threshold for auditors and administrators.

• Daily Time Window For Large Queries. You can specify a period of time during which large queries can be executed. You should ensure that the time window is configured to minimize the risk of affecting users based on your usage patterns.

There are exemptions to list throttling in the following two scenarios:

• If the user is a member of the Administrators group of Web front end (WFE) with Read permissions, all items are returned.

• If the EnableThrottling property of the SPList object is set to false, all items are returned. You can do this using the object model, including by using Windows PowerShell. Doing so allows you to set list throttling settings for a Web application, and then exempt specific large lists and libraries from throttling.

Several other list throttling settings are available on the Resource Throttling page.

• Warning level for administrators. This value configures the warning level shown on the List Settings page. The default value is 3,000. You can configure the warning level by using Windows PowerShell, as in the following example:

$sitecol = Get-SPSite http://intranet.contoso.com/sites/IT$sitecol.WebApplication.MaxItemsPerThrottledOperationWarningLevel = 2500

• List View Lookup Threshold. This value, 6 by default, specifies the number of Lookup, Person/Group, or Workflow Status fields that a database query can involve at one time.

• List Unique Permissions. If a list contains too much unique permission, the system can experience performance degradation. The default value for this setting is 50,000. As the number of unique permissions in a list increases, performance degrades. Reconsider any design in which all or most content in a large list must be uniquely secured. The throughput difference for operations on a list between 0 and 1,000 unique permissions is around 20 percent. There is a configurable default of 50,000 unique permissions per list; however, Microsoft recommends that you consider lowering this limit to 5,000, and for large lists consider using a design that uses as few unique permissions as possible. This aids not only performance but also manageability.

If you are upgrading to SharePoint 2010, and you have a list in SharePoint 2007 that has a default view with a number of items greater than 5,000, after upgrade the large list will not be available until a new default view is created that returns a number of items lower than the threshold.

Another upgrade consideration is related to code that returns large numbers of items. Developers should update their code to account for list throttling. The EnableThrottling property on the list and the RequestThrottleOverride on the query must be specified. Developers can find more information about list throttling on MSDN®.

Additional Reading• “Designing Large Lists and Maximizing List Performance” athttp://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=197207&clcid=0x409.

Remote BLOB Storage

Binary large objects (BLOBs) are used to store large binary data such as documents and media. By default, BLOBs are stored in the Microsoft SQL Server® content database. With Remote BLOB Storage, you can move storage of BLOBs to a different data store.

BLOBs

BLOBs are fields that contain binary data. Following are examples of BLOBs:

• Unstructured data with no schema, such as encrypted data

• Large amounts of binary data with simple schema, such as a document or digital asset

SQL Server stores BLOB data in databases by default. But as BLOB data expands, it consumes server storage. Additionally, BLOBs use server resources, for example, cache, that are optimized for database access patterns, not for storing large files. Therefore, performance can be degraded.

Remote BLOB StorageRemote BLOB Storage (RBS) moves the storage of BLOBs to commodity storage solutions that can be less expensive and that are configured to handle simple storage. The benefits of RBS include the following:

• Database server resources, for example, cache, are freed for database operations.

• Integration with third-party technologies and data stores.

RBS is a library application programming interface (API) that is integrated into SQL Server 2008. RBS works on a provider model. An RBS provider connects SQL Server and the RBS APIs of the BLOB store. RBS ships with RBS FILESTREAM provider. Therefore, you can immediately start to use the RBS FILESTREAM provider to move BLOBs from the database to a folder on a local NTFS volume.

RBS and SharePoint 2010SharePoint 2010 supports RBS FILESTREAM provider with the following constraints:

• Local hard disks only. SharePoint does not support RBS remote storage, such as network attached storage (NAS).• Content databases only. Other databases cannot use RBS.

• SQL Server versions. SharePoint 2010 supports RBS on SQL Server 2008 with Service Pack 1 (SP1) and Cumulative Update 2 or SQL Server 2008 R2.

• RBS version. You must use the version of RBS that is included with the SQL Server Remote BLOB Store installation package from the Feature Pack for Microsoft SQL Server R2. SharePoint also supports third-party RBS providers.

Additional Reading• “Overview of Remote BLOB Storage” (SharePoint Server 2010) athttp://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=197208&clcid=0x409.

Guidance: Should I Use RBS?When you determine whether RBS is appropriate for a particular content database, you should balance considerations of storage, performance, and manageability. You should evaluate the following three questions:

• What kind of content is being accessed? RBS is likely to be beneficial for large content databases—for example, content databases greater than 500 gigabytes (GB) in size. RBS is also likely to be beneficial when BLOBs average greater than 256 kilobytes (KB), such as digital media. Smaller BLOBs, such as those greater than 80 KB, may benefit from RBS if monitoring suggests that the database server is a bottleneck.

• How is content being accessed? RBS is well suited for BLOBs that are less frequently or infrequently accessed, such as document archives. Frequent access to many small files in a library can lead to increased latency if RBS is in place.

• What are the characteristics of the RBS provider? You should familiarize yourself with both the performance and management features of an RBS provider. For example, the FILESTREAM provider is a simple provider that effectively moves BLOB storage out of the database to a local folder on the computer running SQL Server; however, it is not a high-performance provider. Therefore, it is well suited for infrequently accessed content, such as archives, but would not be well suited for use in a high-activity environment.

Additional Reading• “FILESTREAM Storage in SQL Server 2008” at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=197209&clcid=0x409.

Configure RBS for SharePoint 2010

Configuring RBS for SharePoint 2010 is a multistep process. In this topic, each step is detailed. To perform these procedures, you must log in with an account with the following characteristics:

• Account must be a member of the Administrators group on the Web servers and application servers.

• Account must be a member of the Farm Administrators group for the SharePoint Server 2010 farm.

• Account must log in with the Dbcreator and Securityadmin fixed server roles on the computer running SQL Server.

Enable FILESTREAM

First, you must enable FILESTREAM by using SQL Server Configuration Manager.

Enable FILESTREAM

1. Start SQL Server Configuration Manager.

2. Click SQL Server Services.

3. Right-click SQL Server (MSSQLServer), and then click Properties.

4. Click the FILESTREAM tab.

5. Select the Enable FILESTREAM for Transact-SQL access check box.

6. Select the Enable FILESTREAM for file I/O streaming access check box.

7. Select the Allow remote clients to have streaming access to FILESTREAM data check box.

8. Click OK.

Configure FILESTREAM Access Level to Full

Next, configure the access level for FILESTREAM to full by using SQL Server Management Studio.

Configure FILESTREAM Access Level

1. Start SQL Server Management Studio.

2. In Object Explorer, right-click the SQL Server, and then click Properties.

3. In the Select a page section, click Advanced.

4. Click Filestream Access Level, click the drop-down arrow, click Full access enabled, and then click OK.

A message appears indicating that you must restart SQL Server.

5. In Object Explorer, right-click the computer running SQL Server, and then click Restart.

A confirmation dialog appears.

6. Click Yes.

Alternately, you can execute the following query to set the FILESTREAM access level:

EXEC sp_configure filestream_access_level, 2RECONFIGURE

Additional Reading• “How to: Enable FILESTREAM” at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=166110&clcid=0x409.

Provision a BLOB StoreThe next step is to provision the BLOB store that, in this case, is a folder on a localstorage volume, for example, C:\Blobstore.

IMPORTANT: Do not create the folder by using Windows Explorer. Use the following procedure, and SQL Server will create the folder automatically.

1. Start SQL Server Management Studio.2. Select the content database for which you want to provision a BLOB store, and then click the

New Query button on the toolbar.

The Query Editor opens a new query in the details pane.

3. To set the database master key, type the following query into the Query Editor:use [ContentDBName]if not exists (select * from sys.symmetric_keys where name =N'##MS_DatabaseMasterKey##')create master key encryption bypassword = N'EncryptionKeyPassword'

Where:• ContentDBName is the name of the content database for which RemoteBLOB Store will be provisioned.

• EncryptionKeyPassword is a password used to generate an encryption key.

It should be a unique, complex passphrase.

4. Click the Execute button in the toolbar.

5. Click the New Query button on the toolbar.

The Query Editor opens a new query in the details pane.

6. To enable a new filegroup for your RBS provider, type the following query into the Query Editor:use [ContentDBName]if not exists (select groupname from sysfilegroups wheregroupname=N'RBSFilestreamProvider')alter database [ContentDBName]add filegroup RBSFilestreamProvider contains filestreamWhere:

• ContentDBName is the name of the content database for which Remote BLOB Store will be provisioned.

7. Click the Execute button in the toolbar.

8. Click the New Query button on the toolbar.

The Query Editor opens a new query in the details pane.

9. To add a file system mapping for your RBS provider, type the following query into the Query Editor:use [ContentDBName]alter database [ContentDBName] add file (name = RBSFilestreamFile,filename = 'BlobStorePath') to filegroup RBSFilestreamProviderWhere:

• ContentDBName is the name of the content database for which Remote BLOB Store will be provisioned.

• BlobStorePath is the path to the BLOB store folder you want to create, for example, D:\Blobstore. For best performance, simplified troubleshooting, and as a general best practice, you should create the BLOB store on a volume that does not contain the operating system, paging files, database data, log files, or the Tempdb file.

10. Click the Execute button on the toolbar.

Repeat the procedure for each content database for which RBS should be provisioned.

Install RBS on All SharePoint ServersNext, you must install RBS on all SharePoint servers in the farm. Start on a server that is a front-end server. Then, install all other servers, including dedicated application servers.

Install RBS on a Front-End Server1. Download RBS.msi from http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=177388.

You must install the version of RBS that is included in the SQL Server Remote BLOB Store installation package from the Feature Pack for SQL Server 2008 R2. The version of RBS must be 10.50.xxx. No earlier version of RBS is supported for SharePoint Server 2010.

2. Use the following command to install RBS. Do not simply double-click the package.

msiexec /qn /lvx* <InstallLogFile> /i RBS.msiTRUSTSERVERCERTIFICATE=true FILEGROUP=PRIMARYDBNAME="<ContentDbName>" DBINSTANCE="<DBInstanceName>"FILESTREAMFILEGROUP=RBSFilestreamProviderFILESTREAMSTORENAME=FilestreamProvider_1Where:

• InstallLogFile is the name and optional path of a log file that will be generated by the installation, for example, rbs_install_log.txt.

• ContentDBName is the name of the content database for which Remote BLOB Store has been provisioned.

• DBInstanceName is the server and instance name of SQL Server. Installation takes a few minutes. You can monitor installation by using Task Manager. You can also monitor the log file for the text “Installation completed successfully.” For example, use the following command:

type rbs_install_log.txt | find "successfully" /i

Install RBS on Other Servers in the Farm

After installing the first SharePoint front-end server, continue with all other servers in the farm. Use the following command to install RBS on the additional servers:

msiexec /qn /lvx* <InstallLogFile> /i RBS.msi DBNAME="<ContentDbName>"DBINSTANCE="<DBInstanceName>"ADDLOCAL="Client,Docs,Maintainer,ServerScript,FilestreamClient,FilestreamServer"

Where:

• ContentDBName is the name of the content database for which Remote BLOB Store has been provisioned.

• DBInstanceName is the server and instance name of SQL Server.

Confirm RBS Installation

You can confirm the installation of RBS by examining the content database for tables that begin with mssqlrbs. You can use the following query to determine whether the tables exist:

USE [ContentDBName]SELECT * from dbo.sysobjectsWHERE name like 'mssqlrbs%'

Enable RBS Using Windows PowerShell

You must enable RBS on one Web server in the SharePoint farm. It does not matter which Web server you choose for this activity, as long as RBS was installed on it by using the previous procedure.

In SharePoint 2010 Management Shell, type the following commands:

$cdb = Get-SPContentDatabase "<ContentDBName>"$rbss = $cdb.RemoteBlobStorageSettings$rbss.Installed()$rbss.Enable()$rbss.SetActiveProviderName($rbss.GetProviderNames()[0])$rbssWhere:

• ContentDBName is the name of the content database for which Remote BLOBStore has been provisioned.

Configure BLOB Size Threshold Using Windows PowerShell

You can configure the BLOB size threshold above which BLOBs are stored in the RBS provider. If a BLOB is below the threshold, it is stored in the SQL Server database.

In SharePoint 2010 Management Shell, type the following commands:

$cdb = Get-SPContentDatabase "<ContentDBName>"$rbss = $cdb.RemoteBlobStorageSettings$rbss.MinimumBlobStorageSize = 1048576$cdb.update()

Where:

• ContentDBName is the name of the content database for which Remote BLOB Store has been provisioned.

Additional Reading• “Install and configure Remote BLOB Storage (RBS) with the FILESTREAMprovider” (SharePoint Server 2010) at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=197210&clcid=0x409.• “Set a content database to use Remote Blob Storage (RBS)” (SharePoint Server2010) at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=197211&clcid=0x409.• “Migrate content into or out of Remote BLOB Storage (RBS)” (SharePointServer 2010) at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=197212&clcid=0x409.

How Remote BLOB Storage Works

BLOB objects stored with the FILESTREAM provider are stored on the file system with globally unique identifier (GUID)-based names that provide a unique link from the RBS tables.

BLOB content is not encrypted. Transparent Data Encryption (TDE), which can encrypt the content of BLOBs in SQL Server, is not applied to the FILESTREAM provider. However, you can use NTFS Encrypting File System (EFS): Configure the Blobstore folder to be encrypted after the folder has been created by SQL Server. NTFS EFS is transparent to components accessing the NTFS file system.

If you are using RBS, it is important that you consider how you will back up and restore the BLOB store. If you use the SharePoint built-in tools for backup, RBS BLOB stores are included in the backup. You can even restore such a backup to a computer running SQL Server without RBS—the BLOBs will be restored into the database itself.

The SQL Server backup command does not back up BLOBs in RBS. However, the procedure for properly backing up both a database and the BLOB store is straightforward. First, back up the database. Then, back up the file store. To perform a restore, first restore the file store, and then restore the database.