May 20, 2013 at 18:23AvePoint DocAve for SharePoint
In this article I will try to review and give a brief description of some products from AvePoint for SharePoint
DocAve Administrator
DocAve 6 Administrator is a solution designed to centrally manage the farm (or several farms) of SharePoint 2010/2013, as well as Office 365.
The solution allows almost all farm operations that can be performed in the SharePoint Central Administration (for example, create a web application and a collection of sites, configure managed paths and security, service application associations), but makes it easier to work with many farms avlyaya single administration console.
Why almost all operations? DocAve 6 Administrator does not allow creating and deleting service applications - for this you will have to open the Central Administration. I do not know how critical this is, but still I would like to have everything in one place.
In addition to the standard functionality provided by SharePoint, DocAve 6 Administrator contains one feature that, in my opinion, is useful for administrators - deleting user accounts that are not in Active Directory. This is a very useful thing because the built-in functionality does not allow this to be done before. To get rid of old accounts, I could only do this through export / import.
Well, the bonus is that all actions can be automated through a schedule.
DocAve Connector
Features:
• Allows you to manage files on file servers via SharePoint without importing it into the content database.
• It is installed as a feature and can be applied to a specific Web application.
• Allows you to import permissions and metadata from file storage.
A few words about working with documents. When opened for editing office documents via http, the document is proposed to be saved to SharePoint. At the same time, it falls into the content base and does not change on the file share. When opening a document through UNC, there is no simultaneous access to the file - by design. Actually, as required. However, you can still work together - Office Web Apps steers.
However, this solution does not behave correctly when using RBS (both when using a provider from Microsoft or its own). What does it mean not really? When RBS is enabled, when a file is added to the library that is connected to the file storage, the document is added to both the ball and RBS. It turns out useless redundancy.
Moreover, when the DocAve agent was installed, I could not use the standard RBS provider - it simply ignored the size specified in it. The problem was solved when I activated the provider from DocAve.
DocAve Replicator & Contenet Manager
Two very interesting DocAve products for content synchronization. It allows one-or two-way replication of content, configuration, permissions and users both within the same farm and between farms, which is good with geographically distributed farms - you can be sure that the content will be the same everywhere.
Replication can be carried out either in real time (by event) or according to a schedule.
Replication can be either complete or differential. The difference, in turn, can be file and byte (for slow channels).
Content Manager
Allows you to copy or migrate SharePoint content, sites, and topology, both within the same farm (between site collections) and between farms (including SharePoint Online)
Most likely it uses the standard SharePoint functionality (Content deployment) with all its limitations, in particular, the standard functionality does not allow transferring workflows. In Content Manager, workflow migration has been declared, but with limitations: Visual Studio Workflow and Visio Workflow migration, as well as Reusable workflows, are not supported. I didn’t have the List Workflow migration working between farms and between web applications.
Also, content deployment is a one-time action, i.e. you can’t set a schedule for the transfer, only the execution time (now or at a specific time)
In general, this is a good solution for synchronizing content, but it’s not clear why not use the built-in features of SharePoint as Content Deployment.
DocAve Administrator
DocAve 6 Administrator is a solution designed to centrally manage the farm (or several farms) of SharePoint 2010/2013, as well as Office 365.
The solution allows almost all farm operations that can be performed in the SharePoint Central Administration (for example, create a web application and a collection of sites, configure managed paths and security, service application associations), but makes it easier to work with many farms avlyaya single administration console.
Why almost all operations? DocAve 6 Administrator does not allow creating and deleting service applications - for this you will have to open the Central Administration. I do not know how critical this is, but still I would like to have everything in one place.
In addition to the standard functionality provided by SharePoint, DocAve 6 Administrator contains one feature that, in my opinion, is useful for administrators - deleting user accounts that are not in Active Directory. This is a very useful thing because the built-in functionality does not allow this to be done before. To get rid of old accounts, I could only do this through export / import.
Well, the bonus is that all actions can be automated through a schedule.
DocAve Connector
Features:
• Allows you to manage files on file servers via SharePoint without importing it into the content database.
• It is installed as a feature and can be applied to a specific Web application.
• Allows you to import permissions and metadata from file storage.
A few words about working with documents. When opened for editing office documents via http, the document is proposed to be saved to SharePoint. At the same time, it falls into the content base and does not change on the file share. When opening a document through UNC, there is no simultaneous access to the file - by design. Actually, as required. However, you can still work together - Office Web Apps steers.
However, this solution does not behave correctly when using RBS (both when using a provider from Microsoft or its own). What does it mean not really? When RBS is enabled, when a file is added to the library that is connected to the file storage, the document is added to both the ball and RBS. It turns out useless redundancy.
Moreover, when the DocAve agent was installed, I could not use the standard RBS provider - it simply ignored the size specified in it. The problem was solved when I activated the provider from DocAve.
DocAve Replicator & Contenet Manager
Two very interesting DocAve products for content synchronization. It allows one-or two-way replication of content, configuration, permissions and users both within the same farm and between farms, which is good with geographically distributed farms - you can be sure that the content will be the same everywhere.
Replication can be carried out either in real time (by event) or according to a schedule.
Replication can be either complete or differential. The difference, in turn, can be file and byte (for slow channels).
Content Manager
Allows you to copy or migrate SharePoint content, sites, and topology, both within the same farm (between site collections) and between farms (including SharePoint Online)
Most likely it uses the standard SharePoint functionality (Content deployment) with all its limitations, in particular, the standard functionality does not allow transferring workflows. In Content Manager, workflow migration has been declared, but with limitations: Visual Studio Workflow and Visio Workflow migration, as well as Reusable workflows, are not supported. I didn’t have the List Workflow migration working between farms and between web applications.
Also, content deployment is a one-time action, i.e. you can’t set a schedule for the transfer, only the execution time (now or at a specific time)
In general, this is a good solution for synchronizing content, but it’s not clear why not use the built-in features of SharePoint as Content Deployment.