Knowledgebase

DataCentral has access control implemented.

Although, there might be files indexed that are not accessible by some users, DataCentral automatically only delivers search results the specific UltraSearch user has access to.

No. There are no built-in limitations regarding amount of files/data. However infrastructure and SQL server may impose limits. The number of scanned elements therefore has an impact on the speed of creating reports. Some reports might scale worse than others depending on the number of files scanned. We expect up to 500 mio files per scan to work given that the SQL server has sufficient resources and the connection to the storage system is good with low latency.

When dealing with very large folders/drives, the infrastructure SpaceObServer is hosted on could cause performance bottlenecks. Please find our recommendations here.

Usually, you need 1 license to run SpaceObServer and DataCentral on a server + n licenses of UltraSearch Professional for n people that can search the DataCentral indexes.

The amount of data in the indexes and the number of searches is unlimited.

The size of the index varies and depends on many factors:

• the number of actually indexable files (xlsx and txt are indexable... exe, images & videos are not)
• the size of the files

For an average drive, the required space ranges between less than 0.01% of the target to 1%.

For a very high ratio of textual content, up to 30% of the target size might be necessary, but this is quite rare.

Please open UltraSearch, navigate to the DataCentral connection configuration settings and press the button "Test connection". If the connection check fails, please continue with these options:

1. Verify service availability and network connectivity
   Make sure the "SpaceObServer DataCentral" service is running on the SpaceObServer host system.
   Open https://hostname:port/healthz or http://hostname:port/healthz. The endpoint must return "Healthy".
   Make sure the DataCentral connection is not blocked by a firewall. The default port is 5149.
   In SpaceObServer, open Options > Index Service and verify that the DataCentral server is enabled and uses the same port that is configured in UltraSearch.

2. Verify the certificate used by DataCentral
   In SpaceObServer, under Options > Index Service, check which certificate is currently configured for the DataCentral service.
   Compare the certificate thumbprint shown there with the certificate or fingerprint configured in UltraSearch.
   In UltraSearch, certificate settings can only be changed in administration mode.
   If UltraSearch was installed without explicit certificate parameters, it validates the DataCentral certificate by fingerprint by default and stores the fingerprint from the first connection for later communication.

3. Verify authentication and SPN configuration
   Try out connection to the IP adress of the SpaceObServer DataCentral host in UltraSearch. If the connection works with the IP address but not with the server name, the problem is typically related to Kerberos/SPNs. UltraSearch uses NTLM when connecting by IP address and Kerberos when connecting by host name.
   If the connection check with the hostname returns something like "the user is not authenticated" / "cannot access the resource", you can
   1) use NTLM (use the IP address) as authentication method (not recommended because of security reasons)
   2) making Kerberos work by adding the required SPNs to the user account running the DataCentral service (via your ActiveDirectory).
   If DataCentral runs under a dedicated domain account, register the HTTP SPNs on that service account (not on the computer account).
   Use setspn -L <account> to review the current SPNs. Typical examples are HTTP/servername and HTTP/servername.domain.tld.
   Modifying SPNs requires the appropriate permissions on the account object.
   Use setspn -S <SPN> <account> to add a missing SPN.
   
   

If the connection check works, please follow these steps:

1. Scan/Index existence
   If the search returns no results, verify that the folder you are searching in has already been scanned and indexed by SpaceObServer/DataCentral.
   For content searches, verify that the full text index is enabled for the scan.
   Check whether an UltraSearch exclude filter is active.

2. Check the logs on the DataCentral server
   Check the Windows Event Log for errors from SpaceObServer Agent and SpaceObServer DataCentral.
   If a file should be searchable but is not, the file might not have been indexed because of an indexing problem shown in the Event Log.

The speed of DataCentral depends on many factors.

The speed of the indexing of documents depends on:

• the number of actually indexable files (xlsx and txt are indexable, but exe not)
• the size of the files
• the type of the files (txt files are usually faster than xlsx/pdf)
• the hardware (RAM and CPU, incl. the number of cores)

For a small drive, DataCentral can be done within minutes, for larger ones, it can take hours and for very large drives with multiple TB of indexable files (exe files, images, ... don't count), it can even take days. Smaller scans lead to smaller indexes, which can usually be searched through faster.

SpaceObServer shows a progress and an estimation for the remaining time of the indexing in the "Configure scans" window in the "State" column of the scan.

The performance of a search is usually faster than without DataCentral and depends on:

• the number of the files found by the search
• the search term and its frequency in the index
• the network between the UltraSearch client and the DataCentral server

We aim to execute most of the searches within a few seconds.

A first step is looking in the EventLog under "Windows protocols" / "application" for warnings, but especially errors regarding SpaceObServer and DataCentral (on the machine that is running DataCentral).

If a file cannot be indexed or searched, it could make sense to share this file with us via email to spaceobserver@jam-software.com.

If there is another problem, please contact our support.

We might ask you to provide us log file of DataCentral, which are located at C:\ProgramData\JAM Software\SpaceObServer\logs

A detailed explanation of the hardware requirements can be found here: https://manuals.jam-software.de/spaceobserver/EN/DataCentral/2-system-requirements-datacentral.html

If the search results are coming from DataCentral, UltraSearch shows the words "via DataCentral" at the bottom left.

If something does not work and search results cannot be loaded via DataCentral, UltraSearch attempts a "fallback" search, which searches the target folder manually.

DataCentral supports a variety of document types that can be indexed and searched. The following file extensions are supported at the moment:

Textual: DOC, DOT, DOCX, DOCM, DOTX, DOTM, TXT, ODT, OTT, RTF

PDF: PDF

Markup: HTML, XHTML, MHTML, MD, XML

Ebooks: CHM, EPUB, FB

Spreadsheet: XLS, XLT, XLSX, XLSM, XLSB, XLTX, XLTM, XLA, XLAM, ODS, OTS, CSV, TSV, XML

Presentations: PPT, PPS, POT, PPTX, PPTM, POTX, POTM, PPSX, PPSM, ODP

Emails: OST, EML, EMLX, MSG

Notes: ONE, ONENOTE

MISC: ADOC, BAT, BIB, CMD, CONF, CPP, CS, CSPROJ, CSS, DOCKERFILE, DOCKERIGNORE, ENV, ENV.LOCAL, ENV.PRODUCTION, FB2, GITIGNORE, GITATTRIBUTES, GO, GRADLE, GROOVY, H, HTACCESS, HTM, INI, IPYNB, JAVA, JS, JSON, KTS, LOG, MHT, PAS, PHP, POM, PROPERTIES, PS1, PY, R, RB, RE, RST, RS, SH, SHTML, SLN, SQL, SWIFT, TEX, TOML, TS, TSX, VCXPROJ, YAML, YARN.LOCK, YML