Using the Advanced File System Store

This document has been updated and ported to Liferay Learn and is no longer maintained here.

The advanced file system store is similar to the simple file system store (the default store). Like that store, it saves files to the local file system—which, of course, could be a remote file system mount. It uses a slightly different folder structure to store files, which is pictured below.

Figure 1: The advanced file system store creates a more nested folder structure than the file system store.

So what makes the advanced file system store advanced? Several operating systems have limitations on the number of files that can be stored in a particular folder. The advanced file system store overcomes this limitation by programmatically creating a structure that can expand to millions of files, by alphabetically nesting the files in folders. This not only allows for more files to be stored, but also improves performance as there are fewer files stored per folder.

The same rules apply to the advanced file system store as apply to the simple file system store. To cluster this, you must point the store to a network mounted file system that all the nodes can access, and that networked file system must support concurrent requests and file locking. Otherwise, you may experience data corruption issues if two users attempt to write to the same file at the same time from two different nodes.

To use the advanced file system store, follow these steps:

1. Configure portal-ext.properties with this property:

   dl.store.impl=com.liferay.portal.store.file.system.AdvancedFileSystemStore
   

2. Restart Liferay DXP.

3. In the Control Panel, navigate to Configuration → System Settings → File Storage.

4. In the Advanced File System Store screen, configure the store your way.

5. Click Save.

Liferay DXP is using the advanced file system store.

Warning: If a database transaction rollback occurs in the Document Library, file system changes that have occurred since the start of the transaction aren’t reversed. Inconsistencies between Document Library files and those in the file system store can occur and may require manual synchronization.

You may decide the advanced file system store for whatever reason doesn’t serve your needs. If this is the case, you can of course mount other file systems into the documents and media library. In addition to this, you can also redefine the Liferay DXP store to use one of the other supported protocols. S3 store is next.