A Plethora of Alfresco Issues

[leetcharmer]

Hello,

I've just begun testing Alfresco Enterprise Edition with the 30-day trial.  I've created an admin account and have played with the interface of both Share and the Document Management System.  Great stuff, but I need more.  On a blank slate, there are a few things that I need:

1) CIFS access
2) Active Directory Support

I have a computer called PSK-PC that I am testing this on and I can easily access \\psk-pcA … BUT out of the box, this requires user authentication.  I do not have a username and password that can gain me access.  So I decided to follow the documentation on Alfresco Labs 3 Stable (I couldn't find documentation on Enterprise 3.0.1) and edited a lot of xml files.  I ended up creating users in my Active Directory: alfrescocifs and alfrescohttp but don't know if they work as they should.  At the end of that journey, it broke my alfresco logon (unless I commend out the code I added in the web.xml file).  In the end, this allowed me gain access to psk-pcA without being prompted for access, but all I see is "Printers" inside of the share – this does not reflect any of my Spaces.

Should I start over?  Can anyone give me advice as I try this again?

Thanks,
–John Jelinek IV

[zaizi]

1. The default admin / admin username and password will give you access to CIFS, Alfresco Explorer and Share.
2. If you want single sign-on and Active directory integration then you'll need to configure the appropriate XML files.

Within the 30 day trial what functionality are you trying to test / implement that will help you decide if Alfresco is your solution? Does it require Active Directory integration?

[leetcharmer]

1. I tried the default admin / admin initially, but Windows required a DOMAIN to be entered as part of the username for access to CIFS.
2. I've edited a lot of XML files, but in the end, this broke things

We want to use Alfresco as our primary document management system.  We are an accounting firm that stores our client files in a digital FileCabinet.  As we've updated computers to Windows XP SP3, compatibility has been on and off, and this is unacceptable for our practice.  It's important that we have a consistent document management system that will work regardless of the operating system.  The files that are stored in the current FileCabinet are also reflected via a shared drive that we have mapped to all of our users in the domain under F:\Clients.  What we want from Alfresco is an alternative solution that offers ease of access to the files (through Shared Drive / CIFS) but also adds additional smart functionality through meta-data that allows groups of people to work on a file and have that work-flow pass onto others.

Then with Alfresco Share, we would like our employees to have the freedom to add notes or comments about the client files outside of the document to streamline communication with others that jump on-board at different points of document's life-span.

I need to make a proposal on how this will all work seamlessly with our user's current logins so we don't have to offer new usernames/passwords.  Can you also suggest to me what hardware would make a project like this successful for 50 concurrent users accessing documents hosting about 500GB worth of data.

Thanks,
–John Jelinek IV

[zaizi]

1. Just use the machine name as the domain name. As if you were logging into the local machine.
2. Yes, there are large number of XML files. But after a dozen times it does get easier.

What you've described is perfect for Alfresco. You can integrate with AD for authentication. Also, you'll be able manage group membership via AD and thus permissions within Alfresco.

Alfresco can support about 100 concurrent users per 1 CPU a enough disk space to hold that amount of data. Alfresco does not store documents in the database and thus scales quite well.

[leetcharmer]

If we already have documents stored on a shared drive (F:\Clients) – how can I get the database to show this repository?  This will allow us to use the fileserver we already have.  Thanks for your help, I am writing up the document for implementing Alfresco now, I would like you to review it after I am done to make sure all this can be done correctly with Alfresco.  Would you be available for this?

[leetcharmer]

Here is my Alfresco Project Plan, let me know what you think.

Thanks,
–John Jelinek IV

[mrogers]

The documents stored on your "F Drive" need to be copied into Alfresco, through either CIFS or ftp or one of the other protocols.     Alfresco will then "manage" those documents.     You could then change the mapping of your "F drive" to Alfresco's CIFS drive.  

Assuming that you have good network connectivity you could mount Alfresco's file store on your file server but make sure to set permissions such that the files are protected and are for Alfresco's use only.    Once files are managed by Alfresco then they should only be accessed via the alfresco interfaces.

[leetcharmer]

I keep hearing of Alfresco's ease of scale.  How do you add space to the fileserver without then also adding space to the machine that hosts Alfresco?  I thought it was much more flexible than having to actually add space to the server for Alfresco itself.

For example: Can I create a small virtual machine running Alfresco allocated 2GHz and 8GB of RAM, but 10GB HDD space?  Can I point to a repository such as a NAS server that is constantly having space added to it?

Thanks,
–John Jelinek IV

[mrogers]

Yes of course. That's what I meant by "mount Alfresco's file store on your file server"

[leetcharmer]

Oh! That is interesting!  So, how would I go about mounting Alfresco's file store on the server?