In my role at AvePoint, I am often demonstrating the various applications in AvePoint Online Services (AOS), AvePoint’s Saas version of their solutions for managing Microsoft 365 environments. This post will be a deep dive into one of the more obscure, but fundamentally important, objects in AOS: a Storage Policy.
Put plainly, several functions in AOS require a place to put things. In this case, i wanted to create an archive policy to automatically move content that hadn’t been accessed in a defined period of time, moving that content to a non-365 archive and removing it from SharePoint Online. That “place” is called a Storage Policy.
Like its non-Saas sibling DocAve, Cloud Management builds a Storage Policy out of two fundamental object layers: one ore more Physical Devices, which are then bundled together as a Logical Device. A “Physical” device can actually be a cloud-hosted virtual device, such as Azure storage, AWS storage, Box, or other cloud storage services. All devices in a Logical Device must be of the same type, i.e. all Azure, all AWS, etc.
Since I have an Azure storage account already, I went with Azure.
I logged in to AvePoint Online Services and accessed Cloud Management. First stop, the Control Panel.
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Clicking on Physical Device, I get to the Physical Device list, then Create.
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To configure Cloud Management to use my Blob, I needed to provide the following:
- Access Point – the URL in the Blob Container properties, less the container name. If you squint, you’ll see that in the Physical Device dialog, https://blob.core.windows.net is typically sufficient, unless you’re doing something special with your AzureBlobs. Put another way: if https://containername.blob.core.windows.net/containername is the full URL, then the Access Point is that without /container name. For the container name,use containername, without the / .
- Container Name – as mentioned above, this is the /value in your Access Point URL.
- Account Name – this and the Account Key are found at the storage account level, not the Blob level: Dashboard –> Storage Account –> Access Keys. In my case, the Account Name was the same as the Container name.
- Account Key – See # 3.
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Cloud Management provides a handy little Validation Test button, so you can check it’s all correct before running off to rely on something you’re not quite sure works.
![Physical Device Configuration Dialog (2 of 2)](http://techlemode.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/image-6-1024x460.png)
With my Physical Device configured, the rest is a breeze.To configure a Logical Device, I create a new Logical Device and point it at my Physical Device. Note: a Logical Device can consist of multiple Physical Devices, as long as each Physical Device is the same platform. You could pool multiple Azure Storage Pools into one Logical Device.
![](http://techlemode.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/image-7.png)
, Then, I created my Storage Policy, pointing it at the Logical Device I’ve just created.
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By the way, AvePoint’s YouTube Channel has plenty of short how-to videos, including the on-premise version of creating a Physical Device. Additionally, there’s a how-to video on how to create a Logical Device in Cloud Management.