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FileWalker

FileWalker is a Catalogic utility that can be used in conjunction with ECX. It was developed based on customer demand to retrieve owner information for files and folders. The utility functions for volumes that have a CIFS share.

Required Components

ECX: An installation of ECX 2.1 or later.
NetApp Storage System: One or more NetApp storage systems that meet the requirements as detailed in the System Requirements. The storage system must be registered as a resource in ECX.
Windows Machine: One or more Windows machines running the FileWalker utility. The CIFS share for the volumes must be accessible. The Windows machine must contain Java version 1.7 or higher.

Procedure

Before starting, ensure that the CIFS share is present for all volumes to be indexed by this method.

In ECX, catalog the data on the storage systems by creating and running a NetApp Storage Catalog Data policy.
Select FileWalker in the Catalogic Marketplace, then click Download.
In ECX, create a NetApp File Catalog Data policy for those volumes whose owner information you want to retrieve. Select "FileWalk" traversal method.
Run the NetApp File Catalog Data policy created in step 3.

Finding an Owner

To retrieve the owner information:

1. After the above procedure has completed, open the Search tab in ECX.

2. On the Views pane, select Catalog. The Catalog Browser opens.

3. In the Catalog Browser, select NetApp, then select File and view the desired file properties.

You can also use the Search feature in ECX:

To find a particular owner, for example container1\owner1, enter the following search string:
type:file catalog:netapp owner: container1\owner1
To find owners that are part of container1, enter:
type:file catalog:netapp owner: container1*

FileWalker Considerations

The FileWalker utility can be deployed on more than one machine. When the file cataloging job is run with "FileWalk" Traversal mode, the instance of FileWalker is selected randomly.

By default the snapshot directory ( ~snapshot ) is skipped. If there is the need to include this directory as part of filewalk, run the FileWalker utility with option -includesnapshots

The NetApp File Catalog Data job with "FileWalk" traversal method might fail in the following scenarios:

the CIFS share is not accessible on the Windows machines
the CIFS share is not present for the volume
the FileWalker Utility is not running on any of the Windows machines
the FileWalker Utility takes more than five minutes to respond