Overview - Content Indexing and Search

Content Indexing and Search provides the ability to content index and search both your file server/desktop data and protected/archived data for data discovery and other purposes. This product allows Compliance Officers, Administrators and End-Users to search and restore file system and application data. Here is a list of features supported by Content Indexing and Search:

• Ability to Content Index offline and online data, which includes data in storage as well as user desktops.
• Multi-purpose and flexible search capability using the web-based Search Console.
• Search based on User Security which provides the capabilities for:
  • Compliance Officers to perform data discovery.
  • Administrators and end-users to search for files or objects that are associated with their security.
• Ability to edit and save search queries.
• Ability to preview the items returned by the search query.
• Ability to restore files/objects discovered by the search operation.
• Ability to save search results. Data can also be downloaded and saved as .pst, .cab, or .nsf files.
• Ability to Legal Hold discovered items for long term retention for legal purposes.
• Ability to create and attach tags to discovered items and later perform search based on the tags.
• Ability to submit discovered items to a record management system, using the ERM Connector.
• Ability to automate and schedule the data discovery operations using the Content Director Policy.

The diagram on the right provides a broad overview of Content Indexing and Search.

Content Indexing and Search consists of the following main components. The diagram on the right provides a broad overview of the deployment and configuration of these components.

Content Indexing Engine

The Content Indexing Engine is the core component for the content indexing and search feature. It is the underlying integrated software application that provides indexing, searching and filtering services for all data - including file server/desktop data and protected/archived data. As the content indexing process is very resource intensive it is recommended that the engine be installed in powerful computer that has extensive memory and hard disk availability at all times. (See System Requirements - Content Indexing Engine for minimum requirements.)

The Content Indexing Engine may be installed as a single-node installation where all the components within the Content Indexing Engine are installed in the same computer. Depending on the volume of data that must be content indexed in a CommCell, one or more Content Indexing Engines can be installed and configured.

You can also perform a multi-node install to customize the installation of each Content indexing Engine to distribute and harness the capacity of multiple computers.

Content Indexing Engine is the first component that must be installed.  (See Deployment - Content Indexing and Search for more information on how to install the Content Indexing Engine.) The properties of each Content Indexing Engine in the CommCell is displayed in the CommCell Console under Storage Resources.

Once installed, you can configure the content indexing engine to set the maximum number of batch slots and maximum number of documents per batch. You can also specify a staging location where the files to be content indexed will be staged temporarily prior to content indexing.

Both offline and online content indexing processes are configured to use a Content Indexing Engine. This is explained in the following sections.

Offline Content Indexing

Offline Content Indexing is used to content index the storage data secured by the various data protection/data archive operations. For this reason the configuration of the Offline Content Indexing is associated with a storage policy. Each storage policy must be configured to use a Content Indexing Engine, if content indexing is enabled in the storage policy. (See Configuration - Content indexing and Search for more details.) The MediaAgent associated with the Storage Policy will be used for reading the data associated with the storage policy.

Offline content indexing is supported for all types of of data including compressed, deduplicated and encrypted data.

Offline Content Indexing for RMS Protected Documents

You can also perform offline content indexing of documents/emails secured by Rights Management Service (RMS). Rights Management Service (RMS) is a technology that works with RMS enabled applications (such as, Microsoft Office applications, Microsoft Exchange Server, and Microsoft Sharepoint Server) to set usage rights on documents or emails. This is basically used by content authors to set permissions on their documents/emails in order to limit access to other users. For more information on Rights Management Service, refer Microsoft documentation.

For more information on content indexing RMS protected content, see Content Indexing RMS Protected Files.

Offline Content Indexing for NAS Agents

Offline content indexing is also supported for NAS backups. See Content Indexing- Support for a list of data types that are supported by offline content indexing.

Offline Content Indexing for Virtual Server iDataAgent

Offline content indexing is also supported for file level backups on VMware virtual servers. See Content Indexing- Support to know the virtual server platforms supported by offline content indexing.

Offline Content Indexing for Lotus Notes/Domino Server

Offline content indexing is also supported for Lotus Notes email backups.

In order to enable Domino Directory Service login or to restore Lotus Notes emails, you need to install the Lotus Notes Client on the Web Search Server on a 32-bit platform.

Online Content Indexing

Online Content Indexing operations can be performed using the following agents:

Online Content Indexing for File System Agent

The Online Content Indexing for File System Agent allows you to content index live files residing on Windows computers.

The Online Content Indexing Agents must be installed on all the computers in the CommCell that you wish to content index and search. See Deployment - Content Indexing and Search for information on installing the Online Content Indexing agents.

See Configuration - Content indexing and Search for information on configuring the Online Content Indexing agents.

Search

Once the data is content indexed, it can be searched for data discovery and other purposes. Search can be performed using the following components:

Web-based Search Console

The web-based Search Console provides a multi-purpose and flexible method to search and if necessary restore data. It has an easy-to-use search interface modeled after popular search engines.

In order to perform searches from the Search Console, you need to install the Web Search Server and the Web Search Client. For information on installing the Web Search Server and Web Search Client, see Deployment - Content Indexing and Search.

Once installed, the web-based Search Console and User security must be configured before it is used. See Configuration - Content indexing and Search for more information.

The Search Console also has powerful built-in security features that enables both compliance and end-users to search data based on individual security permissions. In addition, it also allows users to restore the appropriate file/data if necessary.

The Search Console provides several options and tools to search the data. It also provides following additional advanced search options to further refine your search.

• Search on multiple content indexing engines.
• Enable/Disable Lemmatization and synonym search.

During search, you have the facility to include intra operators against search criteria in the advanced search options window. It also allows users to preview the search results in the same or new window.

When performing end-user search, the Search Console also provides options to search for Exchange emails on delegated mailboxes for a specific user. This is described in Data Discovery and Search.

Domino Directory Services Login

Lotus Notes Domino users can now login to the Search Console as end-users using Domino Directory Services.

In order to enable Domino Directory Service login or to restore Lotus Notes emails, you need to install the Lotus Notes Client on the Web Search Server on a 32-bit platform.

You also require to add a new domain controller for Domino Directory Services. For detailed information on adding a domain controller for Domino Directory Services, see Add a New Domain Controller for Domino Directory Services.

If Active Directory end-users need to search for Lotus Notes emails, they can do so by authenticating with the Domino domain server.

User Administration

The User Administration page is used to configure user preferences for end-users and compliance users when performing searches from the Search Console. It also provides facility to upload customized logos to the Search Console. In addition, you can also view the analysis of searches performed on the Content Indexing Engine for a given time range, using the Search Analytics tool. For detailed information on configuring user preferences from the User Administration page, see Configuration - Content indexing and Search.

Legal Hold

Legal Hold provides the ability for a compliance user to segregate relevant information found during a data discovery and search operation and preserve them for long term retention for legal purposes. It uses a policy based approach to search relevant data and retain a subset of the data for a long retention period. Legal Holds can be created from the Search Console as well as the CommCell Console.

• Search Console

  The Search Console provides the facility to add the search items to a new Legal Hold or to an existing Legal Hold interactively. The items added to the Legal Hold will be an unaltered copy of the original data.

  The Search Console also provides the facility to modify or delete an existing Legal Hold. Once the Legal Hold is created, you can retrieve the Legal Hold items to a new review set. For detailed information, see Legal Hold.

• CommCell Console

  Legal Holds can be created, modified, and deleted from the CommCell Console. In addition, you can also automate and schedule the process of adding discovered items to a new or existing Legal Hold using the Content Director Policy.

  Whenever a new Legal Hold is created, a corresponding Legal Hold Set is automatically created under the CommServe's File System iDataAgent in the CommCell Console.

  You can retrieve data from the Legal Hold Set in the CommCell Console. For more information, see Legal Hold.

Tagging

When performing search on content indexed data, you can assign tags to the discovered items for easy identification/classification. These tagged items can then be searched based on the tags. There are pre-defined tags or system tags already available in the CommServe. In addition, you can also create user-defined tags from the CommCell Console. Tagging is applicable only for Compliance users and administrators.

• Search Console

  The Search Console provides the facility to assign tags to search items interactively. The associated tags are automatically displayed on the search result page as well as the review set page for each search item. You can also perform search based on the associated tags.

• CommCell Console

  Tags are defined from the CommCell Console. There are also pre-defined tags created and stored in the CommServe database by default. These tags are readily available for tagging purposes. A compliance user can create, modify, or delete user-defined tags from the CommCell Console. Once created, you can schedule the operation of assigning tags to search items using the Content Director Policy in the CommCell Console.

For detailed information on creating and assigning tags, see Tagging.

ERM Connectors

ERM (Enterprise Records Management) Connectors allows you to submit discovered documents and files to a record management system. Currently, the software supports submission of documents to Microsoft SharePoint Record Center. When you create an ERM Connector, you pre-define the mapping of documents to a specific ERM server in the record management site. ERM Connectors can be used only by Compliance users. You can create and use ERM Connectors from the Search Console as well as the CommCell Console.

• Search Console

  Once you have moved the search result items to a review set, you can select specific search items in the review set and submit them to an ERM using available ERM Connectors interactively. You can also create a new ERM Connector and map it to an existing or new ERM server in the record management site from the Search Console.

• CommCell Console

  In addition to creating ERM Connectors, you can modify or delete ERM Connectors from the CommCell Console. You can also schedule the process of submitting content indexed documents to the Records Management Site using the Content Director Policy.

For detailed information on using ERM Connectors, see Enterprise Records Management (ERM).

Content Director Policy

The Content Director Policy is a component under Content Director node in the CommCell Console, that allows you to automate and schedule the data discovery and search operations, such as Legal Hold, Tagging, Restore to Review Set, and ERM Connector. You can also use the policy to restore the discovered items to a review set in the Web Search Client. When automating these operations, you can also specify the date from which the backup/archive data will be considered for the search. If a particular job is qualified to be processed by the Content Director Policy, it will be not be pruned even though eligible to be pruned, until acted upon by the policy.

For more information, see Content Director Policy.