IFS Cloud File storage - Azure and External Files

IFS Cloud File Storage service works with Azure Blob Storage in Cloud deployment and with SMB ("Windows shares") in Remote deployment.

Those are the only options today, apart from storing the documents in the database. Since you mention they don't want to use Azure, I assume this customer is Cloud deployed, which means they don't have any other options than those two.

This post doesn't directly discuss this, but some of the comments mentions customer with similar needs:

https://community.ifs.com/document-management-docman-248/deprecation-of-the-ftp-and-shared-repository-types-in-docman-in-24r1-a-heads-up-39710

A possible solution for your customer is that they create "empty" documents in IFS and keeps links to the document where it's actually stored, if that "storage place" (let's imagine it's SharePoint) allow creating links. There are older posts that cover this topic here on IFS Community.

Good luck!
 

Thank you Mathias,

Then to sum up, for our customer using IFS Cloud and not in Remote Deplaoyment the only solution will be to use Azure Blob Storage.

Some of the final french customers from our Customer are not confident with all documents to be stored in Azure Blod Storage and would like for some of them to be stored in other locations as stated in the IFS help “IFS Cloud File Storage (File Storage, or FS for short) is a secured generic framework service which can be used to store and retrieve documents from different locations such as Azure Storage and local file shares” and as defined in Repositories 

• Document Management

  • Basic Data

    • EDM Basic

      • Repositories

Do you have any ideas how we can manage to propose to our Customer for some of their final customers some alternative storage locations ?

​@Patrickdefives 

> Then to sum up, for our customer using IFS Cloud and not in Remote Deplaoyment the only solution will be to use Azure Blob Storage.

They can keep their documents in the database as well.

> Some of the final french customers from our Customer are not confident with all documents to be stored in Azure Blod Storage

Do you know why? They keep all their business data (table data in Oracle) in IFS managed cloud, which is hosted in Azure.

About this quote:

“IFS Cloud File Storage (File Storage, or FS for short) is a secured generic framework service which can be used to store and retrieve documents from different locations such as Azure Storage and local file shares

You can file a support case to get that made clearer. The intent is not to say that "FS" supports local file shares in Cloud deployment. Local file shares are only supported in Remote deployment. They might think this is clear enough though (24R2 documentation):

> Do you have any ideas how we can manage to propose to our Customer for some of their final customers some alternative storage locations ?

Can you elaborate on what you need help with? There are no other storage locations for Document Management in Cloud deployments than:

- Database
- File Storage

The FTP and Shared repository types are only supported in Remote deployment, and the support for those will soon be removed as well.

If the customer wants more control over the storage of their data (table data or documents), perhaps they want the Remote deployment option? 

The whole idea with our managed cloud offering, I'm thinking, is that you keep all your data there. You don't pick and chose what data should be there and what data should be locally stored. If you want that flexibility, you can self-host, on your own hardware or in some other cloud offering that allow this mixed/hybrid hosting.

> Some of the final french customers from our Customer are not confident with all documents to be stored in Azure Blod Storage

Do you know why? They keep all their business data (table data in Oracle) in IFS managed cloud, which is hosted in Azure.

Yes Data are stored in Azure but they are relunctant to store their conception drawings inside Azure when those drawings are part of defense industries.

Our customer is a one of the supplier of highly protected industries and as well supplier of standard industries. For the highly protected industries he is aked by his customers to never store documents in Azure.

Any Idea how to split these 2 different types of Storage ?

Regards

​@Patrickdefives 

Thanks for the explanation. I can understand how they don't want to keep their defense-related documents in Azure...

There's no really good solution for them, honestly. The only option is to NOT keep those files in IFS, right? And the only way to do that is to ... not keep them in IFS 🙂

They can try out the "link approach" I mentioned above. Then IFS knows about the documents, but doesn't keep the files, and they can still connect those "dummy documents" in IFS where they belong (to different business objects/entities). The actual file is stored wherever they want, and they can keep a link to it (if the place supports linking) on the document revision, or they can just keep some reference to it there.

​@Mathias Dahl Whats the reason that REMOTE instances of IFS Cloud cant use Azure File Blob storage for this?

Documented here: https://docs.ifs.com/techdocs/24r2/030_administration/210_cloud_file_storage/

All the IFS docs steer towards using the SMB approach, which presents some challenges that dont exist withg Azure Blob Storage. All the SMB cofiguration works, and is just YAML config to enable it, but there is no documented YAML config for the Azure Blob Storage in the helps docs.

​@Mike.Hollifield 

I can't speak for the team that owns the IFS Cloud File Storage solution but I can guess that, at the time it was implemented, it was hard or unwanted to have a remote deployed environment work towards an Azure Storage account.

> but there is no documented YAML config for the Azure Blob Storage in the helps docs.

It's because it's not supported. Makes sense, right?