Two months ago I was at a SharePoint conference where I saw a nice presentation of Dan Holme regarding blob storage.
As per Microsoft definition – a binary large object (BLOB) is a large block of data stored in a database that is known by its size and location instead of by its structure — for example a Microsoft Office 2010 document or a video file.
After analyzing different opinions and articles, in a SharePoint Production environment, by externalizing BLOBs will improve your SQL performance. If your SQL performance is improved your SharePoint Server performance will be improved as well.
Below you have a small table showing the performance gained if you use RBS:
|
Without RBS |
RBS |
Gain |
|
|
Database Size – 1 TB |
2292 GB |
26 GB |
98.9% |
|
Database Backup Size – 100 GB |
217 GB |
7 GB |
96.8% |
|
Database Backup Time – 100 GB |
2490 seconds |
38 seconds |
98.5% |
|
Database Defrag Time – 100 GB |
120 seconds |
4 seconds |
96.7% |
|
Avg. SharePoint Response Time |
28 msec |
21 msec |
25.0% |
|
Large File Upload – 500 MB |
55 seconds |
29 seconds |
47.6% |
|
Large File Upload – 1 GB |
69.4 seconds |
48 seconds |
30.8% |
Extract from this article: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=14726 SQL Server RBS Performance with SharePoint Server 2010 and StorSimple Storage Solution
If you want to use third party tools for blob storage I recommend AvePoint or Metalogix
Below you have another table showing the differences between filestream and third party:
|
Feature |
Filestream |
Third party |
|
SharePoint 2010 (Server and Foundation) |
√ |
√ |
|
SharePoint 2007 (MOSS 2007 and WSS v3) |
√ |
|
|
All SQL versions (2000, 2005, 2008, 2008 R2) |
√ |
|
|
All SQL editions (Express/Standard/Enterprise) |
√ |
|
|
Externalize BLOBs to DAS, iSCSI NAS/SAN |
√ |
√ |
|
Externalize BLOBs to file share, WORM |
√ |
|
|
Externalize to the Cloud (Azure, Amazon etc) |
√ |
|
|
Native compression and encryption |
√ |
|
|
Externalize to multiple storage providers within 1 CDB |
√ |
|
|
Synchronous backup of BLOB store & SharePoint |
√ |
|
|
Backup of content DB independent of BLOB store |
√ |
|
|
Item level Recovery |
√ |
|
|
Platform Level Recovery |
√ |
|
|
Restore without DB staging |
√ |
|
|
Content restructure (shallow copy) across Web apps |
√ |
|
|
Content replication |
√ |
|
|
Connect to and manage file shares through SharePoint |
√ |
|
|
Connect to and manage media shares through SharePoint |
√ |
|
|
Business rule support (content type, metadata, access date) |
√ |
|
|
Externalize to hardware-based HSM |
√ |
Source of this table is from Dan Holme’s presentation.
Additional information can be found at:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff628583.aspx Plan for RBS (SharePoint Server 2010)
http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=14726 SQL Server RBS Performance with SharePoint Server 2010 and StorSimple Storage Solution
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb802812.aspx Overview of External BLOB Storage in SharePoint Foundation
http://www.sharepointpromag.com/article/sharepoint/blob-blob-139907 To BLOB or Not to BLOB