Add content with out uploading?

[kai]

I have just installed Alfresco to see if it will work for our organization is there a way to Add content (ie cad files , pdfs and such) to Alf. without uploading to the server running ALF.? As we have several Terabytes of data that cannot be moved. is there anyway to point it to say a mapped drive or shared folder and have the data be indexed for searches Thanks KAI

[afaust]

Hello,

Alfresco does not support remote / external storage locations out-of-the-box, so no, without doing a proper upload or import (Bulk Import Tool), content will not be available (index / search) in Alfresco. As I have not yet worked with the Bulk Import Tool myself, I don't know how many and what steps need to be performed in order to use this to import the files into Alfresco via shared drive without actually moving them (except temporarily for indexing / extraction purposes). But this tool would be the way I would go in further investigations / evaluations.

Regards
Axel

[kai]

I have found info on the Bulk Import Tool I believe it still requires the files to be physically move to the server that is actually running ALF but I am still investigating Thanks!

[jpotts]

Yes, the Bulk File System Import Tool requires the files to be physically moved to the server. That's one of the reasons why it is able to import so many files so quickly. It doesn't do an upload at all–it simply moves them to the place on the file system Alfresco expects, then updates the database.

Jeff