  [Link]Browse only volumes
Working with multiple volumes
Large FirstClass systems may require a network store that spans multiple volumes. Additional volumes can be any hard disks installed on your computer, and any network drives to which the computer has read and write access. You cannot use diskettes as additional volumes. When using Mac OS X, you might have multiple volumes mounted on your desktop. Typically, each volume corresponds to a physical hard disk. You can also use disk formatting software to create multiple volumes on a single physical disk.
Why you might need multiple volumes
You might choose to install your network store on multiple volumes in one of the following situations:
• You have a large FirstClass system.
• If you have only a small percentage of your disk available for use, or you run out of disk space, your FirstClass system may be too large for its current hardware configuration.
• You want to control the amount of space available to specific users or conferences.
For example, a FirstClass server might have three volumes:
• internal users located on the master volume
• external users, such as customers and suppliers, on the first secondary volume
• replicated conferences on the second secondary volume
If either secondary volume becomes full, internal users will not be affected.
Note
A multi-volume network store is more complicated to administer. There are no performance, reliability, or feature enhancements if using the multi-volume feature when it is not needed. You should use a single volume if possible.
Multiple volume considerations
You should remember two things when assigning users and conferences to volumes:
• When a user sends a message, FirstClass keeps one copy of the message. This copy stays on the sender’s volume until the sender and all recipients have deleted it, or until it expires.
• If you are using conference replication, any conference items received from other servers are stored on the volume containing the conference.
Users who habitually send large attachments, or post large messages to conferences, should be assigned to volumes with ample disk space. Similarly, large, replicated conferences should be placed on volumes with sufficient free space.
Understanding the status of volumes
Before you can assign users or conferences to a volume, the volume must have a status of Full use. When you install your server, only one volume has that status — the volume on which you installed the FirstClass server. This volume is the master volume.
Audit is performed only on Full use volumes. The audit task does not check other volumes, even if they contain network stores. This means, a volume that had a status of Full use and was later reduced to Limited use or Browse only will not be checked during audit.
You can make full use of any hard disks installed on your computer and any network drives to which the computer has read and write access. You cannot make Full use of diskettes.
Changing the status of volumes click is described in Changing additional volumes status to full use.
Full use volumes
You can add users and conferences to any Full use volume.
If you subsequently change the status of a Full use volume to Limited use or Browse only, the folder containing the FirstClass network store is not deleted. The volume will not appear on the list of available volumes for your system and the volume will behave as described below.
Limited use volumes
When a volume’s status is Limited use, you cannot create new conferences or users on the volume, but you can create aliases. The volume will not be checked during trash collection, and conference information on the volume will not be accessible. Once all items on the volume expire, the volume will disappear.
Browse only volumes
When a volume’s status is Browse only, you cannot create any new users, conferences, or aliases. The volume will not be checked during trash collection, and conference information on the volume will not be accessible. Once all items on the volume expire, the volume will disappear.
Using FirstClass volumes on Mac OS X
Note
This section is only applicable to Mac OSX environments.
The FirstClass server for Mac OS X introduces a new concept of logical FirstClass volumes. The Mac OS X operating system mounts volumes under a /Volumes path. The FirstClass server could use this list directly, however that would remove the flexibility of allowing you to control what volumes are visible to FirstClass administrators who have access to the Volumes list. This is important not only for security reasons, but also for performance reasons. It is important for you to be able to insert CDs and DVDs or mount network volumes without having these appear automatically to the FirstClass server.
The FirstClass Volumes list
The FirstClass server therefore allows you to define an explicit list of volumes accessible to the server. These need not correspond directly to physical drives, but could also be folders or symbolic links to any location visible in the Mac OS X file system hierarchy. For this reason, they are referred to as logical volumes.
Note
Although logical FirstClass volumes can be symbolic links to any location, the fcns (FirstClass network store) folder in each volume and the files contained within that folder must be normal folders and files rather than symbolic links.
Logical FirstClass volumes are stored within the FirstClass Server folder under /Library, in a subfolder called Volumes. Any folder (or symbolic link to a folder) in this Volumes folder is considered to be a logical FirstClass volume, and will show up in the FirstClass Volumes list on the administrator’s Desktop. An additional entry corresponding to the root of the Mac OS X file system will automatically appear in the FirstClass Volumes list.
Uses of logical volumes
In addition to being able to refer to multiple specific physical drives from FirstClass, logical FirstClass volumes can be used to partition users and/or conferences into logical groups, such as a separate logical volume for Internet news groups, that can later be split into separate physical devices. To do this physical split at a later date, you would move the files to the desired location and replace the FirstClass folder with a link to the other location in the file system.
Logical volumes also allow multiple former Mac OS server volumes to be merged onto one or more physical drives. To do this, put the network stores in separate folders under the Volumes folder.
And finally, they also leverage one of the greatest strengths of UNIX-based systems, the logical union of different objects under the single umbrella known as the root file system. Defining a FirstClass volume as either a folder in the file system or a link to an arbitrary location in the root file system allows for maximum flexibility.
External folders
You can use external folders to give users access to the folders on any storage device available to the server machine. They are useful if you have large numbers of files (for example, on a CD-ROM) that you want to make available to your users. It's easier to drag files into a folder on your hard drive than to upload them all to a conference.
When users open an external folder, they actually see the contents of the folder outside the FirstClass system. Users can do the following with external folders:
• view folder contents
• view text files, preview certain types of picture or sound files, and download files
• search the filenames and content of text documents.
External folders work equally well for remote and network sessions.
External folders are read-only. You cannot upload files to an external folder from within FirstClass.
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