Best place to look for advice

[crun]

What would be the best place to ask a some general and more specific questions about Alfresco? My company is looking for a digital asset management system to use as a basis for several of our services and I'm looking for answers to questions like the following:

* can Alfresco be used on a NetApp system (the next step would be: how do you implement this)
* is it possible to have disseminators on an asset / derivatives of a file within the same asset (say different thumbnails of a hi-res image)
* has an upper limit been found for the maximum number of assets Alfresco can store, or is this solely dependent on the configuration of the system
* there are rules for creating, changing and removing assets, but can rules be created for downloads
* can Alfresco log the number of times an asset is downloaded (say through Webdav)

If anyone could answer them that would be great, but I'm more looking for some kind of resource/institution I could pose these question to (maybe Alfresco itself?). I've searched these forums, the Alfresco site and the wiki, but can't find any definite answers. I know many more questions like these will occurs, and I don't want to spam them here every time a new one pops up, so are there any other places to look for advice?

[zaizi]

* can Alfresco be used on a NetApp system (the next step would be: how do you implement this)

Yes

* is it possible to have disseminators on an asset / derivatives of a file within the same asset (say different thumbnails of a hi-res image)

Yes. http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Thumbnail_Service

* has an upper limit been found for the maximum number of assets Alfresco can store, or is this solely dependent on the configuration of the system

Solely on the system. Alfresco stores content binaries on the file system and metadata in the database. This allows efficient storage and access of large digital assets.

* there are rules for creating, changing and removing assets, but can rules be created for downloads

Yes. We've just did this for a client. We added custom permissions to allow / deny, Downloading and Printing.

* can Alfresco log the number of times an asset is downloaded (say through Webdav)

Yes. Turn on auditing. http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Audit

Where are you based? You can contact an Alfresco partner in your locale. We are based in London, UK. Feel free to contact us. Or other partners: http://www.alfresco.com/partners/.

Feel free to ask on the forums.

[rogier_oudshoor]

Alternatively, you can always contact Alfresco themselves - they will probably refer you to a partner.

[crun]

Hi Zaizi and Rogier, thanks for the replies and suggestions.

My company's based in The Netherlands, and there are quite a few partners listed on the page Zaizi linked to that we can contact. I've already telephoned the UK branch of Alfresco, and they said they would contact me back.

As for my questions and Zaizi's answers: I've tried out the thumbnailing service and that works great. We've also set up a testing environment on the Netapp share to see how it behaves.

One more thing I'd like to ask: I've experimented with auditing, but as far as I can tell downloads aren't logged here. Changes to the file / metadata apear in the audit trail, but it doesn't seem to track downloads. I've only tested this with a default install of Alfresco so maybe there are (audit) options I've overlooked?

[rogier_oudshoor]

Crun,

Alfresco is a very open repository that can be accessed via FTP, WebDAV, CIFS, Web Client, Web Servicies, CMIS, etc. Which of those access methods do you need to track? The answer will probably be customization though

Rogier

[chrisdav]

Sounds like you need to add getReader method to a couple of the services. It details at the bottom of this page http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Audit_Configuration which services to change.

For some reason they leave it out by default.

Beware, there was a bug in 2.2 SP1 that causes problems, e.g. you can't view any content if you have getReader turned on, some transactional problem. Was OK before that and they fixed it in SP2.

[crun]

Thanks for both your replies, and sorry for the delayed response. It's good to know all those services can be configured to have auditing available - it keeps our options open as to what access methods to use.

[glenn_leach]

Curious,

Did you end up going with Netapp for your storage applicance? We're considering both Netapp and an Isilon Storage cluster. Wondering if anyone has used Isilon as the storage cluster with an Alfresco implementation on Mac OS X Server.

[crun]

In the end we've chosen to forgo Alfresco and develop our own in-house document management system, because this way we have better integration with the software we are currently building.

We did talk to an Alfresco consultant, and he assured us that NetApp based storage is very much possible with Alfresco. Keep in mind though that because Alfresco uses its own method of storing files in binary blobs, and its own indexing service, that replication and restoring from backup on a NetApp is more complicated than a normal file-based storage solution.