Business Objects FRS Pruning

Hello Techies,

This is the continuation of Business Objects File Repository Servers Blog and we are going to see how to optimise the File Repository Servers by FRS pruning.

Have you ever got the chance to see how a Crystal or WebI document or Instance stored internally in the File System? Here it is.

The document will be saved internally in the file system with in one or more folders named based on random name generation.
What will happen if the report or the Instance deleted?

The report or the Instance alone will be deleted and leaving the temporary folders as it is. As a result of this over the period of time, there will be thousands of folders in the FRS and will be a intricacy for the Administrator when he goes for the FRS Backup. The Backup process will be very time consuming as well as occupy more space and finally the FRS will be inefficient.

How to get rid of this?

The “-Prune” command, added at the end of the command line of the File repository servers will be handy at this moment.

Working with FRS Pruning and Tracing

-Prune command, added at the end of the command line of servers triggers the server to go through the ‘Input’ or ‘Output’ folders in the internal ‘Filestore’ folder of Business Objects Enterprise to clean up all the empty directories.

-Trace command, added at the end of the command lines of the servers logs the activity of that specific server in the ‘Logging’ folder of the BOE installation directory.

We need to periodically delete the empty FRS directories to cleanup the disk but not to be manually. Instead the FRS server should be started with the -Prune command line switch. When this switch is used, the FRS servers’ status will remain ‘Starting’ till the deletion is done. Once deletion is done, the servers will stop. The -Prune switch will have to be removed manually to allow the servers to start normally.

Working with FRS Pruning and Tracing

Add -Trace and -Prune

1. Stop File Servers (both IFRS and OFRS) in CCM (XIR2) or in CMC (XI 3.x).

2. Add -Prune command at the end of the line to FRS (Input and Output) and also –Trace Command at the end of the line to check it is cleaning up files and folders that are empty.

3. Start the servers and Monitor the pruning process, you should gain more hard disk space.

Remove -Trace and -Prune

1. Stop the Servers and remove -trace and -prune commands from the command line Parameters of FRS.

2. Start the Servers again normally.

Viewing Log files

You can find the log files in the below location (for XI 3.x)

C:\Program Files\Business Objects\BusinessObjects Enterprise 12.0\Logging

Points to remember

• After the Pruning process if any empty folders still exists, they may be used by BO to keep for its housekeeping process.

• Don’t leave the prune option enabled even after the prune completed. Once pruning completed successfully the FRS will be stopped. We have to re-modify the command line by removing –Prune and -Trace and Server has to be started manually.

• Pruning process does not clean-up any CMS object that lost the FRS files that they need to point to.

Please Note -Prune is an undocumented feature in Business Objects.

We will see more about the Business Objects Servers Tuning in the upcoming blogs.

Happy Blogging!!  Keep reading!!