Technical Note: XTN1206
Background
One of the consequences of using a tape or optical disc archive library to provide storage capacity is that the time to read the first byte of data can become quite extended. This means that the time to read the first byte can extend to several minutes in worst case scenarios. Configurations with network timeouts after 30 seconds are inadequate to accommodate these time delays. HSM technologies have been around for many years and back in the early days of Windows NT, Microsoft recognised the network timeout issue and added the ATTR_OFFLINE attribute bit to the SMB extended file attributes. There is a corresponding FILE_ATTRIBUTE_OFFLINE that is returned by the file system to indicate that a file will take a long time to read. Microsoft also implemented code in the SMB client that recognises this extended file attribute and changes the network timeouts to accommodate the time delay in recalling files.
Problem
Microsoft introduced the SMB2 protocol in Windows 2008 Server and Windows 7 and SMB3 in Windows 2012 and Windows 8. However, Microsoft's SMB2 and SMB3 implementations failed to respect the off-line attrubute. XenData worked with Microsoft to have this resolved.
Resolution
(i) XenData6 Server systems installed on Windows 2008 R2 SP1 and Windows 7 systems must have KB2848321 applied.
(ii) XenData6 Server systems installed on Windows 2012 SP1 servers must have KB2848322 applied – Please note this patch is not required on Windows 2012 R2 systems.
(iii) As described in the Knowledge Base articles below clients should have the registry DWORD ExtendedSessTimeout added, with an appropriate value set, suggest 900 seconds.
Further information can be downloaded from the links below:
Applicable Operating Systems
- Windows Server 2012
- Windows Server 2008
- Windows 7
Applicable XenData Software
This technical note is applicable to:
- Version 6 – Server Editions of Archive Series software
PBS
XenData’s fully supported clustered server meets all the requirements for our disaster recovery site. We have been very pleased with the SX-525 product and XenData’s technical team who have provided system design and integration services above and beyond expectations.
James Cutright, Director, Project Management
PBS
Crew Cuts
I did my research, and the best archive solution was from XenData which manages a robotic LTO library behind the scenes. This helps to minimize our total costs and allows us to focus on producing great content for our customers.
Chris Keenan, CTO
Crew Cuts
Ideal Systems Singapore
We partnered with XenData for the GlobeCast Broadcast facility rollout, because it offers one of the most cost effective, robust digital video archives on the market and a great migration alternative to some of the more expensive digital video archive vendor offerings.
Fintan Mc Kiernan, CEO
Ideal Systems Singapore
North Shore Automation
Having completed over 25 joint installations of XenData archive systems, we have found everyone on the XenData team to be both highly professional and super responsive and their technology to be rock solid. They are truly a pleasure to work with.
Bryson Jones, Founder
North Shore Automation
This is Just a Test
With over 558 TB of content and growing, conventional backup solutions just don’t work for us. Our XenData system allows us to maintain an ongoing mirrored copy of our shared storage while creating replica LTO copies for offsite storage.
Nathan Flom
This is Just a Test
Excelencia
We have now installed over 170 XenData archive systems across Mexico and they have proven to be very reliable. In addition, the technical support from XenData has been outstanding.
Jorge Castaneda, President
Excelencia en Comunicaciones y Tecnología