Novell Filr is an enterprise file management tool designed to share files by leveraging your security infrastructure, both internally as well as externally. Filr gives you access to corporate files (including files that are located on mapped drives) and lets you access them from a mobile app on a mobile device, from a desktop application on your workstation, or from a Web browser.
It is important to distinguish between Filr applications and appliances.
Filr applications are client interfaces that allow users to access the Filr software. There are three Filr applications:
Web application
See the Filr Web Application User Guide for information about how to use the Filr Web application.
After installing Filr, you can log in to the Web application. Review the information in Site Setup
in the Novell Filr 1.0.1 Administration Guide for information about how you can configure your Filr site.
Desktop application
See the Filr Desktop for Windows Quick Start and the Filr Desktop for Mac Quick Start for information about how to use the desktop application.
Before the desktop application can be available to users, you need to configure it for your Filr site, as described in Configuring the Filr Desktop Application to Access Files
in the Novell Filr 1.0.1 Administration Guide.
Mobile app
See the Filr Mobile Quick Start for information about how to download and use the mobile app.
Appliances are prepackaged software bundles designed to reduce installation and configuration overhead. Components that make up a Filr site can be deployed either as a single appliance for small installations or as multiple appliances for larger installations. Filr appliances run as virtual machines within a VMware, Hyper-V, or Xen environment. For more information about the individual Filr components, see Section 1.1.2, Filr Components.
A Novell Filr site consists of three major components. In very small deployments, each of these components is part of the Filr appliance. In large deployments, the software, the database, and the search index run as separate appliances.
The Filr software is a customized version of Apache Tomcat. This software provides the Web-based functionality you use as you access the Filr site through your Web browser.
This component is either part of a single Filr appliance along with all other components (Small installation), or it is the stand-alone Filr appliance, with the Filr database and Filr search index also running as separate appliances (Large or Clustered installation). For more information, see Section 2.0, Installing the Filr Appliance and Configuring the Operating System.
The Filr database is a MySQL database that is used for storing information about the Filr site and its users:
Structural information about folders and files
Identification information about folders and files (for example, titles, descriptions, dates of creation/modification, and users associated with creation/modification)
User profile information (for example, full name, phone number, and email address)
The Filr database disk space requirements are relatively modest, because the database is not used for storing files.
This component can either be installed as part of the Filr appliance or it can be installed as a separate appliance to enhance performance. You can also use an existing MySQL database as the Filr database, but you must make certain changes on the database to configure it to work with Filr. For more information, see Section 2.0, Installing the Filr Appliance and Configuring the Operating System.
The search index is a high-performance Java search engine built with Lucene technology. The search index contains pointers to the actual data stored in the Filr file repository. The index enables the search engine to perform very fast searches through large quantities of Filr data.
This component can either be installed as part of the Filr appliance or it can be installed as a separate appliance to enhance performance. For more information, see Section 2.0, Installing the Filr Appliance and Configuring the Operating System.
Data for the Filr system is stored in the following three areas:
The MySQL database is used to store MySQL data files, including tablespace data files, tablespace log files, and binary log files. It is also used to store comments on files and folders.
The MySQL database can be part of the all-in-one appliance (small installation), can be configured as a separate appliance (large installation), or you can leverage an existing MySQL database.
When you set up Filr (either as a single appliance in a small installation or as separate appliances for a large installation), you configure data to reside either on a hard disk or on a remote NFS.
The following kinds of data are stored for each appliance on the hard disk or remote NFS:
All appliances: Web application certificates for Jetty and Tomcat and the Ganglia RRD database.
Filr appliance: Data for the Filr appliance (located in the /Cachefilestore and /conf, /extension, /filerepository, /temp direcotries).
Search index appliance: Data for the Lucene search index appliance.
MySQL database appliance: Data for the MySQL database appliance.
For more detailed storage information, see Table 1-1, Filr Appliance Storage.
Configuration information for each appliance is stored on the appliance itself, and can be exported during and update process and then re-imported.
For more information, see Section 9.0, Updating Filr.
Novell Filr lets you work with files in important ways:
Access: Access the files you need in multiple ways, including from a Web browser, from your desktop, or from a mobile device.
For more information, see Accessing Novell Filr
in the Novell Filr 1.0.1 Web Application User Guide.
Share: Share files with your co-workers and grant them specific rights to the files. For example, you can share a file with User A with Read-Only access, then share the same file with User B with Edit access.
You can easily see what has been shared with you and what you have shared.
For more information, see Sharing Files and Folders
in the Novell Filr 1.0.1 Web Application User Guide.
Collaborate: Make comments on a file, then all users with access can see your comments and make comments of their own.
For more information, see Commenting on a File
in the Novell Filr 1.0.1 Web Application User Guide.
Filr allows you to access, share, and collaborate on files that are in two key locations:
Novell Filr gives you easy access to folders and files on your corporate file system. Corporate files can be files on your home drive, files on a mapped drive, or files on a remote server. Filr gives you seamless access to these files, regardless of their location. The corporate files that you have access to are defined by your Filr administrator.
In Filr, you access these corporate files by clicking in the masthead. For more information about Net Folders, see the Novell Filr 1.0.1 Web Application User Guide.
Users can upload files directly to the Filr site for personal use or to promote collaboration. Users can create folders to better organize files. For more information about how to upload files, see Adding Files to a Folder
in the Novell Filr 1.0.1 Web Application User Guide.
Files and folders that are located in a user’s My Files area are visible only to that user by default. Users can make files and folders available to others by sharing them, as described in Sharing Files and Folders
in the Novell Filr 1.0.1 Web Application User Guide.
Unlike files in the Net Folders area, files in My Files do not exist on an external server, but rather on the Filr server itself. Users can access these files by clicking in the masthead.