Advise on set-up

  • Hey Guys,


    I just inherited the administration of a couple conquest servers and had some questions about the way things are set up and if there is a better way of doing things.
    We have 3 locations, all with multiple machines sending images to a local server (let's call them local1, local2, local3)
    Every night a script is running on each of those servers, that will query the SQL server for the images of the day, and through command line with moveseries put a copy on our central archive server.
    local1 is quickly running out of space and the advise I got from my predecessor is to create a script that will select old images through the sql database and delete them then of the hard drive if needed


    local1 has a fast connection with vpn's to the 2 other locations and the archiveserver
    local2 and local3 are on a bit slower connections, also with vpn's to the archiveserver


    Reading through the manual, I came across a couple options that I think might make my life easier and wanted to confirm this before putting them in place.


    1) is there a way of making sure all images from one server are also on a second archive server?


    2) would it be possible to stop the nightly script to archive our images on the archive server if we put mirrordevices in place?
    2a) How long can the queue get and is there a need to doublecheck this with a different script?
    2b) According to my predecessor, this method was unreliable and there is a chance this corrupts images. If this ever was so, is this still the case?


    3) to prevent us from manually deleting anything, can I set up nightlymovetarget to be the same archive server just to make sure we have a copy before removing anything?
    3a) if that would work, and the vpn between the 2 locations is slow or down, would this queue up or fail?



    So my configuration would be as follows (if everything above is possible)


    Code
    # Configuration of disk(s) to store images
    MAGDeviceThreshhold = 0
    IgnoreMAGDeviceThreshold = 0
    MAGDevices = 2
    MAGDevice0 = E:\SSImages\
    MIRRORDevice0 = \\archiveserver\images\
    MAGDevice1 = \\archiveserver\images\
    NightlyCleanThreshhold = 0
    NightlyMoveTreshold = 10240
    NightlyMoveTarget = MAGDevice1


    4) all servers only have 1 MAG for now, this because I've been told adding a second one will decrease performance enormous. Is this true and if it is, will performance across multiple mags be an issue if we have 4 mags of 10 TB?


    Thanks

  • No problem, anyone is free to help, or I'll gladly wait until next week.
    Local1 isn't going to run out of space for another 3 to 4 weeks, so not that urgent.


    En mijn ouders zijn hier in de VS op bezoek uit Belgie voor een week, geen antwoord op deze vragen betekent ook dat ik er 's avonds niet aan moet werken :D

  • Hi,


    1) is there a way of making sure all images from one server are also on a second archive server?
    The 'find missing patients' button does that but it is slow.


    2) would it be possible to stop the nightly script to archive our images on the archive server if we put mirrordevices in place?
    Yes


    2a) How long can the queue get and is there a need to doublecheck this with a different script?
    It is configurable, and errors are logged. So doublecheck is not needed if you watch the error logs.


    2b) According to my predecessor, this method was unreliable and there is a chance this corrupts images. If this ever was so, is this still the case?
    Not as far as I know


    3) to prevent us from manually deleting anything, can I set up nightlymovetarget to be the same archive server just to make sure we have a copy before removing anything?


    3a) if that would work, and the vpn between the 2 locations is slow or down, would this queue up or fail?
    It queues up and failures are kept on a disk file that will retry regurarly


    4) The performance hit of using multiple MAGS is small in my view. You can also add a second MAG and use a script to let all new images be written there by default.


    Hope this helps!


    Marcel

  • Hi,


    Sorry, I had skipped looking at your config. I think it is INCORRECT to mirror to the same device as MagDevice1, nightlymovetarget must be MAG1


    # Configuration of disk(s) to store images
    MAGDeviceThreshhold = 0
    IgnoreMAGDeviceThreshold = 0
    MAGDevices = 2
    MAGDevice0 = E:\SSImages\
    ; MIRRORDevice0 = \\archiveserver\images\ <---- THIS IS INCORRECT; FOR A DUPLICATE USE ANOTHER DISK
    MAGDevice1 = \\archiveserver\images\
    NightlyCleanThreshhold = 0
    NightlyMoveTreshold = 10240
    NightlyMoveTarget = MAG1
    ; The device name is MAG1 !!!


    Marcel

  • my intention is not to use mag1 as an overflow device
    so all new images would be written to mag0 and mirrored to the archiveserver
    and I was just looking for a way to copy all images before we do a purge to that same archiveserver, to make absolutely sure nothing is missed and deleted
    can I do NightlyMoveTarget = \\archiveserver\images\ if it's not recommended to define a mag1 and not use it for the intended purpose as overflow device?

  • Hi,


    you can define a MAG1, it will not be used as long as MAG0 has enough space. However, the nightlymove is a MOVE not a COPY. An image cannot be one more than one MAG anyway (there is one location defined in the database). If you want a COPY use a MirrorDevice only.


    Marcel

  • Thanks for the quick reply


    Will conquest actively check for duplicates?
    Since with my proposed setup there would be loads of duplicates
    MAGDevice0 = E:\SSImages\
    MAGDevice1 = \\archiveserver\images\


    All images in MAGDevice0 will also be in MAGDevice1
    I thought this wouldn't be a problem since Conquest would never need to save anything in MAG1 as long as there is enough space on MAG0


    What I wanted to try and do with the setup is set up mirrordevice to make sure everything from now on gets copied on our archiveserver automatically
    and before the nightly cleanup move old images to the archive server as well instead of just deleting them (since I don't know if all our old ones are there)

  • Hmm, just thought of something that might invalidate this whole train of thought.
    When moving images into the folder on the archiveserver, I'll need to ask conquest on the archiveserver to recheck for new images every night.
    Which will take forever, so might not be the best option


    Seems I might just need to keep using my script that runs nightly to manually copy studies from our local conquest to the archive server
    (the script queries the database for studies added on todays date and then runs a command line script with c:\conquest\dgate64.exe --moveseries:....)
    And before I enable to cleanup script to make absolutely sure I compare both servers to see that everything local is on the archive server


    Just thought I could simplify things, but might not be as easy as I thought unless there is an option to do the archival in a way the archive server is aware of the images added
    Thanks for the help anyway!

  • Hi,


    There are a few options for backup:


    - backup the disk with external software
    - use a mirrordevice - this is an automated copy of each arriving file on a MAG
    - use another dicom server, this is what you do


    Marcel

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