As we know one of the SharePoint’s key capability is Document libraries and the files within these libraries internally stored in content databases as BLOBs along with metadata.
RBS is used to extend the storage of file outside of SharePoint to optimize the overall storage cost. With SharePoint 2013, there are architectural changes in how SQL stores files and also how WFEs deal with those files. This new capability made available is called “Shredded storage”.
So it is important to make proper design decision to leverage SP 2013’s shredded storage before considering RBS.
Let us start dive into the details to understand these
concepts better.
SharePoint 2010 storage and retrieval
With SharePoint 2010, when the end user updates the
document, only the changes used to be send back over MS-FSSHHTTP and the Web
Server used to load the complete BLOB from database and updates the parts in it
and stores the updated BLOB into Database again.
SharePoint 2010 way of document changes are
explained below
The problem with the above approach is there is overload on
WFEs even when a portion of the document changed.
Now we will see how Shredded storage with SharePoint 2013
addressed the above problem
Shredded Storage:
Shredded Storage is a new data platform improvement provided
with SharePoint 2013 related to the management of large binary objects.
The files are broken into pieces and stored as multiple
BLOBs instead of a single BLOB. On update only the related chunks will get
updated on SQL.
Shredded Storage in SharePoint 2013 optimizes I/O and
provides smoother I/O patterns when compared to prior versions of SharePoint Products,
and it provides storage cost benefits under conditions where historical
versioning is widely used and implemented.
By default, Shredded Storage partitions data across a 64 KB
boundary based on the FileWriteChunkSize property, which is configurable up to
a maximum partition size of 2 GB. 2 GB is also representative of the maximum
file size supported by SharePoint 2013.
RBS and Shredded Storage
Remote Blob Storage (RBS) was introduced in SharePoint 2010
and continues to exist in 2013. RBS is best used to push relatively large files
from being contained directly in the SharePoint content database(s) out into an
actual file system.
The Blob threshold can be adjusted by “MinimumBlobStorageSize
“setting which controls minimum size of files to move to RBS by the Management
Shell on SharePoint server.
Let us think about both RBS and Shredded Storage
1.
RBS works best with larger blobs
2.
Shredded
Storage slices larger blobs into a lot of very small blobs
Conclusion
So the guidance is to consider RBS only when there are large
files which are mainly existing for ready only purpose ex: Record Library and
Archive Library. Evaluate FileWriteChunkSize
and MinimumBlobStorageSize s properly to avoid unexpected results