Question

FileSystemWatcher - reliability and huuuuuge implementation

Asked by: CoolestBananas

Hi,

I am looking to implement the FileSystemWatcher in some large corporations with 5000-100000 users across as many as a few hundred data servers. I appreciate there will be bottle necks when coming to evaluate my data - I will cross that bridge later. Does anyone have experience using the FileSystemWatcher on a large scale? Is it reliable? I have read something about catching errors to ensure all activity can be acknowledged.

All thoughts will be welcome.

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Asked On
2009-07-02 at 02:19:18ID24538971
Tags

c# vb.net windows services filesystemwatcher class

Topics

C# Programming Language

,

.NET Framework 3.x versions

,

Microsoft Visual Basic.Net

Participating Experts
3
Points
500
Comments
6

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Answers

 

by: Rahu_ketu_patalPosted on 2009-07-02 at 03:01:26ID: 24761722

 

by: CoolestBananasPosted on 2009-07-02 at 03:16:36ID: 24761800

That is a very useful link. It is irritating that this class is unreliable - so predictable! Have you had any other feedback? Is this your test case?

 

by: CodeCruiserPosted on 2009-07-02 at 07:26:47ID: 24763673

There are many more issues with the FileSystemWatcher. It not only misses some files, it would raise multiple events for the same file. As a test, watch a directory in a sample program and then use notepad to create a text file in that directory. You will receive two events for that same file. The best approach, in your case as it involves so many users and servers, would be to hook into Windows storage system at low level and monitor the hard disk activity. Here are some references but these mainly cover the UI aspect of hooking

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/magazine/cc188966.aspx

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/system/globalsystemhook.aspx?msg=840940

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms644959%28VS.85%29.aspx

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/cs/netwin32hooks.aspx

 

by: Solar_FlarePosted on 2009-07-02 at 13:43:49ID: 24767557

I have used the filesystemwatcher to monitor files at my company (probably around 250 clients each monitoring their own network share location for new files created). I found that the biggest issue was that network interruptions meant that I had to catch the error raised and loop at intervals trying to re-initialize the filesystemwatcher until the connection was restored (otherwise the program keeps running but just desen't receive any events)


 

by: CoolestBananasPosted on 2009-07-03 at 02:40:45ID: 24771168

CodeCruiser: I have had a quick skim through those links and they are very useful. Thanks. I feel comfortable hooking into the Win32 API. What worries me is that this is what the FileSystemWatcher is trying to do and obviously has problems and therefore is unreliable. Why is it unreliable? Will I not just come across the same problems but in a more roundabout way?

Solar_Flare: I would be running the "watcher" on the device and building a file to be dumped on another server for evaluation. What do you think?

 

by: CodeCruiserPosted on 2009-07-03 at 02:52:43ID: 24771213

FileSystemWatcher is developed so that it just raises all file creation, modification, deletion events etc. When you hook into API yourself, you could handle the situations so that you do could handle the creation of a file properly. You could also code around the Watcher in way that you monitor the events being raised and match them to previous recent events to detect if multiple events are generated for same file etc.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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