https://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?

qid=1737676

Difference between Content Server and

Archive server
appnair (Programmer) 16 Sep 14 17:33
Do you have a membership in www.opentext.com? If so you could understand most of it
yourself.
If you do not let me point out somethings that may not be architecturally not well but
something you could relate.
There is no product called OpenText it is a Canadian company making many many different
suites of products.

Livelink a.k.a Contentserver is a ready to use Enterprise Content Management system so it

has a fully working DMS,
fully working Search(FT & MetaData) and a rudimentary workflow offering. Livelink,
Documentum ,Filenet where the major players before the behemoth $carepoint came into
being .All of them are much more capable than $carepoint but don't have the money to
combat it .Scarepoint requires lots more database space and more people to administer it and
more hardware compared to any of the others but management likes the fact that says its
free(Really?). So many companies will retire the old dms's and go with Scarepoint to be left
in the lurch.

Archive Server is basically a Hybrid File System on steroids.It is used when you need to store
a lot of data as in documents or even transactional(structured) data.Unlike livelink which is a
3 tier application the AS is basically an API based system who the application(which we call
Leading applications). Many leading applications like SAP,Exchange,$carepoint, Livelink
are its customers.You add a document and the document lands in the archive server's holding
place.The holding place is extremely well written with all kinds of stuff to help almost
everything that a org wants.Very low maintenance you set it and forget it.Perhaps add table
space,file space that kind.

I will stop with a real life example.

Your manager says we have to migrate 1 TB of data into livelink and unfortunately the files
are very small like 1 KB so you do the math there will be millions of files
to be uploaded Assume livelink is using a File System for storage. At some point livelink's
file storage will burst at the seams ,you will stop when the failure occurs and add more space
and thing may or may not go right.

If you connect livelink and say you configure it as the leading application to an AS.As the
AS'es write buffers,logical pools etc get close to filling up the AS administrator will add
more space. Livelink will not know or would care the loading operation will go very
smoothly.Many in the industry like ours refer to livelink as the "Brains" and AS as the
"Brawns"