Moving - Repointing test environment Disk Groups and deleting data from old disk groups

[Ed_Faroun1]

Our test environment is being relocated to a different server, currently we have a ridiculous amount of documents in test that we would like to take the opportunity and purge/delete, this is a test environment and we really don't care about the data.

What would be the best practice here? For the Disk Group relocation, should we:

1. Create the Folders in the new share and share them out

2. Copy the OnBase ID Files to the corresponding folders 

3. Repoint the Disk Groups location in Config to the new location 

4. Delete all old volumes in the old share

Would this be the best practice or is there a better practice and would we need to do anything else to clear the Database or deleting the documents would suffice?

Thank you

[AdamShaneHyland]

Configuration Migration is Free License.  You will need to contact your solution provided for the license.  Based on your statement, I would recommend going down this road as it will make creating the Test Environment much easier.

In regards to the System Disk Group, it is possible that the System Files (ie. HTML Forms, Document Templates, etc) are stored across multiple volumes.  It's hard to say where those files are going to be.  With Configuration Migration, the process of creating a Test Environment will copy over only the needed files to maintain the system configuration.

While it could be possible to manually configure Custom Queries or Document Retrieval searches to find all of the documents that you would like to purge from the system (ie the files and the metadata), this seems like a very long and complicated process when you can get the Configuration Migration module to assist.

Take care.

[Ryan_Evoniuk]

When creating a Test environment from a backup of a Production environment, I copy the the latest 2-3 volumes (I copy all System volumes) for each disk group to a new location, change all the disk group pointers and update the onbase.id files, then run a SQL delete statement to clean up the document pointers so users don't get mount errors on non-existant documents. There are a few ways to build your delete statement, you can delete anything older than a certain date (make sure to exclude the System disk group) or make it more precise by deleting by volume. Your first line of support should be able to help you build the statement. You only want to do this in a non-production, non-critical database and you will have to perform some testing afterwards.

It is a lot of work, but using Configuration Migration isn't an option for me since it doesn't migrate data and we do a lot of testing with workflows and other processes that require documents to be handled.

[AdamShaneHyland]

Ryan,

Thanks for the post.  However, you should never delete from the OnBase database without first contacting Hyland Software.  It is against our maintenance agreement to make changes to the database.

Thanks.

[William_Howell]

Using Configuration Migration may be an option, and it's free, but you need to be aware of the things it won't migrate before deciding which solution is the least painful.

[Ryan_Evoniuk]

Adam,

I did specify that it should only be done in a non-Production and non-critical environment, also with the help of their support contact. I think most of us are well aware of the maintenance agreement and modifying the database. I think he should be aware of his options (especially since it is a supported method for making a Test environment), I'm not trying to get everyone to start slicing up their databases for the fun of it.