Disaster Recovery - handling files missing from the filestore

[Richard.Rankin]

A scenario that Autodesk Support frequently finds itself in, is having to assist customers that have experienced a catastrophic disaster on their Vault Server. (see What is a Disaster Recovery Plan). Autodesk Vault Server software provides a robust method of backing up the entire Vault database and the files contained within the filestore.

Autodesk Support frequently has to assist Vault Administrators get back into production with the sometimes incomplete backups they have available.

More often than we would like, when the backup is restored, we find the filestore validation runs and identifies multiple problems with the recovered filestore. A message can appear in the AVFS Console log files stating a file is failing validation as it is corrupt or missing completely. See the following: - "The requested file was missing from the file store." trying to get file(s) from Vault". and "Could not validate or replicate resource" appears in the AVFSConsole log files"

It is possible a file exists in the filestore that has multiple versions and just one of those versions is corrupt or missing. That missing version of the file could be referenced by a drawing, and also possibly Released. When a user tries to get that corrupt\missing file they are presented with a message like this.

The wish is to instead of just presenting the unhelpful error message stating the file is missing, ask to substitute the file version with something else. The substitution could be an earlier or later file version or even a completely different file instead. Once the version substitution is made,  no reference is ever needed again to that missing file version and the AVFS Console log would stop reporting it.

For example, a drawing has two versions. It references a part file that has 10 versions. Version 1 of the drawing references version 5 of the part. v5 of the part is the only released version of the file but it became corrupt\or missing following the recovery of a disaster. When the component needs to be manufactured, they will want to open the v1 of the drawing using v5 of the part file and make it. When they open\get v1 of the drawing, a message appears saying the file is bad\missing. It could at this point offer to use V1-4 or v5-10 of the part file instead, or even offer the possibility of a completely new file that has just been recreated from scratch. This would be a much more graceful way of handling this situation.

[ihayesjr]

Thanks for posting the idea Richard.

However, replacing a missing file can lead to many unwanted outcomes down the road if that model is used in many other assemblies. The best course of action is to fix the missing file in the filestore.

[Richard.Rankin]

Thanks Irvin, I understand about the wrong files being substituted resulting in production mistakes. Although I am not sure how it could be possible to fix something that is not there. This comes from being involved in dozens of disaster recovery situations over the years. I was just hoping some lessons could be learnt to improve the software and make it a less negative experience for customers.