Product FAQ
GENERAL | INSTALL & SCAN | FILE ACCESS MANAGEMENT | FILE RESOURCE MANAGEMENT | IT BENCHMARKING | COST CALCULATOR | EXPORT | SUPPORT | KNOWN ISSUES
GENERAL
Q - What is Aprigo NINJA?
Aprigo NINJA is a suite of SaaS (Software as a Service) data management applications that help IT professionals manage unstructured data on file servers and NAS devices. With Aprigo NINJA you will experience:
- A unique visual interaction model that makes sense of data and shows how permissions are managed and how IT dollars are being spent (by file type, owner, age etc.) both on-site and in the cloud
- An industry-first IT Benchmarking (Collective Intelligence) engine that compares customers live IT environments, usage and costs
Q - Where can I get Aprigo NINJA?
To install Aprigo NINJA you need to register with Aprigo first via: http://www.aprigo.com
Once you are registered and activated (check for an email from us) you can install Aprigo NINJA and start scanning your environment
Q - Aprigo NINJA FREE and Aprigo NINJA PRO - what is the difference?
Aprigo NINJA FREE offers:
* File Resource Management - including full exports
* IT benchmarking
* 500GB per scan
On top of the features available in Aprigo NINJA FREE, the PRO version offers:
* Capacity increased to support up to 5 TB (1TB per scan, up from 2.5TB and 500GB per scan)
* File Resource Management summaries and charts available for 10 levels (3 levels for a FREE user)
* Access Management - see who can access your shares and folders, do you have the 'Everyone' exposure problem
* Faster scans
For more details on Aprigo NINJA PRO see: Aprigo NINJA PRO (PDF)
Request a free trial of NINJA PRO
Aprigo NINJA PRO - Quickstart Guide
Q - How does Aprigo NINJA help me to secure my environment?
Aprigo NINJA PRO enables you to secure access to files by:
* Reporting on exposure levels
* Discover who can access specific data
Q - How does Aprigo NINJA help me in reducing storage costs?
Aprigo NINJA will enable you to quickly get a picture of who's using what in the environment, how much stale data there is, how much redundant data is out there and with the built-in cost calculator, you can see the financial implications of that information. This information is helpful in preparing or justifying:
* Data Migration projects
* Data Archive projects
* Storage Charge-back
* Tiered storage projects
* Cloud based storage
Q - How come I need to download your Application if this is a SaaS product?
By downloading the application you get the following benefits:
* Enhanced user experience through the Adobe Air Player (Rich Internet Application)
* It is the only way for us to scan your environment (can't do that through the browser)
Q - How many Aprigo NINJAs can I run in my environment?
We do not limit the number of Aprigo NINJAs you can run in your environment
Each Aprigo NINJA will generate its own data, which will not be shared with other Aprigo NINJAs (our PRO version will allow you to share data in a future release)
Q - What platforms are supported by Aprigo NINJA?
Aprigo NINJA runs on Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 2003 server, Windows 2008 server and Windows 7.
Windows 7 and Windows Vista are now supported with UAC (user access control) is turned on.
You can scan any CIFS share over the network including NAS devices
Active Directory – Windows 2003, 2008
Q - I really like Aprigo NINJA but I have a Linux / Mac environment...
Mac & Linux NINJA are available in our labs
Q - How do I tell my friends about this?
Log in and click on the 'refer a friend' link
Q - How secure is my data?
Aprigo scans and collects meta data only (file name and file attributes), we do not open files.
Any communications from Aprigo NINJA is encrypted via https over port 443
Aprigo's website and web services are hosted at Amazon Web Serbvice (AWS), the leading cloud infrastructure provider in the world. To read more about AWS security please click here: http://aws.amazon.com/security/
Q - I never got a confirmation email from you. What's the deal?
If you have a particularly strict spam filter, please be sure to whitelist www.aprigo.com, and be sure to check your spam box to see if there's an email from us there.
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Q - What are the system requirements to run Aprigo NINJA?
* Adobe AIR player: http://get.adobe.com/air/
* An Internet connection
* For best performance we recommend that you install Aprigo NINJA on a system with: 2GB ram, core 2 duo 2.0 GHZ and 50GB hard drive
* To scan domain targets, Aprigo NINJA should be installed on a system that is in the domain
* Aprigo NINJA requires a domain account and will scan targets (shares and folders) that are available for the configured account
Q - Why do I need an Aprigo account?
You need to be registered with Aprigo to be able to install Aprigo NINJA and login
By asking you to log in we are also able to keep you up to date with the most recent version of our product
Q - How do I install NINJA?
The Aprigo NINJA install is quick and easy
If you do not have AIR player the installer will point you to the adobe site to download AIR player
To download, simply log-in at www.aprigo.com and you will se the download link on your home page
Q - What credentials do I need to have in order to install and use Aprigo NINJA?
You have to be an admin on the machine Aprigo NINJA is installed on
To scan network shares you must have sufficient permissions to access these shares. The PRO version will ask you to specify which account to scan the network with. To take full advantage of the PRO features you can supply credentials to scans Active Directory Quickstart Guide
Q - Can I uninstall Aprigo NINJA from one machine and install it on another?
Uninstall can be done via: 'Add or Remove Programs'
To install on a different machine simply log-in to the website and download your new Aprigo NINJA
Q - How do I start a scan?
You can click on the settings icon that is located at the lower left of the application screen.
Simply enter a target (Network share or Folder) and Aprigo NINJA will do the rest
Q - What can I scan?
* Local folders
* Network Shares
Q - What is the scan rate?
The scan rate can vary depending on the system specification, network speed and the type of target you are scanning. Generally (on a system with: 4GB of RAM, and at least a Core 2 Duo running at 2 GHz) you can expect the following:
* Scanning local targets: 1800 files per second
* Scanning remote targets (over the network): 750 files per second
These scan rates include the time it takes to analyze the scanned data
Note: if you have Symantec anti-virus installed you can expect slower results. For optimal speed you may want to disable the anti-virus while the scan is running
Q - What information is collected during scan?
We only collect meta data such as: names and types of the files, location, size, owners, dates of creation and modification
In the PRO release we also collect NTFS permissions and Active Directory users and group
Q - How many scans can I run?
You can perform as many scans as you like. However, you can only view your last 5 scans
You can scan up to 5 targets each time
The Settings interface allows you to view older scans (for navigation - click on the right and left green arrows). Once you find the scan you would like to view simply click on 'View Results'
Q - What happens when I reach 1TB during my scan? (or 500GB in FREE)
The NINJA crawler will stop once it reaches the 1TB limit (500GB in FREE). You can view the results for the 1TB scanned (500GB in FREE).
Q - NINJA reports on more files & capacity then what I see in Windows explorer. Why?
NINJA does scan ALL of your environment, including hidden & system files. That's why in many cases the Aprigo NINJA will report on more files & size. It's just stuff that's there, even though Windows Explorer doesn't tell you about it...
Q - What resources will Aprigo NINJA consume on my machine?
Aprigo NINJA will use available CPU resources. It will use more CPU if no other processes are running and will scale down when other processes ask for them.
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FILE ACCESS MANAGEMENT
Q - What does Aprigo File Access Management provide that windows doesn't provide natively?
Aprigo NINJA differs in several substantial ways from windows:
- With Aprigo you will be to quickly assess how much of you environment is expose to everyone in your organization. Aprigo tracks all Everyone group access to folders and is able to summarize it across your entire environment
- Understanding who can access a folder is one click away. Simply select a folder and immediately view all the users and groups who can access that folder
- Aprigo will also expand all Domain groups to show subgroups and users who effectively can access the folder.
In contrast, in windows you have to navigate through the folder properties dialogs and then separately navigate through Active Directory groups to figure out user and group membership
Q - What does effective permission mean?
The answer to the question who can access a folder should really provide the list of all users who could access the folder if they would try to. In order to answer that question you need to take into account NTFS permissions, and then expand any local or domain group to its sub groups and users. This is the only way to report on who can effectively access a folder. Aprigo NINJA automatically collects all the information from NTFS, local users and group and Active Directory and reports on effective permissions.
Q - What is the Access Summary chart?
The access summary chart allows you to quickly understand exposure levels by summarizing the various major groups of users who can access the folder and its all its sub-folders. If there are folders who can be accessed by all the people in the company (the Everyone group) you will see a red bar highlighting this exposure.
Specific groups that are summarized in this chart:
* Everyone
* Domain Admins
* Domain Groups
* Local Groups
* Domain Users
* Local Users
Each bar shows how many folders in the selected folder tree can be access by that group. For example: The Local Users on the target host can access 10000 folders out of 24000 folders on this folder tree.
Q - What are the different filter options?
The filters allows you to switch between different views. For example when you change the filter to 'All Groups' you will get the list of all the groups NINJA found in Active Directory. This allows you to view all membership and permissions and see if permissions or group memberships need to be adjusted.
Q - Can I view and track permission changes?
Permission change tracking and notifications are in the works for the next relrease
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Q - How do I see the File Resource Management (utilization) data for my share?
Selected utilization reports (like: top owners, popular files, distribution by Modify date and distribution by size) are available in the dashboard. You can click on any report to get to the complete utilization view where additional reports are available. You can also use the menu utilization icon (pie)
Q - How do I navigate down the directory structure?
Once in File Resource Management, you can dbl-click on the pie (navigational component by size that shows your top folders) or dbl-click on any folder from the grid
You can navigate through the entire directory structure. However, the summary reports are available for the first 3 levels only
Can I get alerts when my share is running out of space?
You can see see the free space on the drive of the target(s) you scanned.
Alerting and notifications are on the road-map
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Q - What is IT Benchmarking/ Community Data?
IT Benchmarking reports allow you to compare usage and costs of data in your environment to other Aprigo community members
Q - Can I compare my self to customer in my industry only
The ability to choose what type of companies you would like to compare your data is on our road-map
Q - How do I read the IT Benchmarking reports ?
Each report shows side by side the data we found in your environment (blue) and the Community aggregate (green). For example, you can see how much space certain file types or unchanged files take in your environment and compare with the community average.
Q - Can I opt not to share my data with the Community?
If you are a NINJA user this means you also contribute to the Benchmarking statistics. Keep in mind, that all the reports are anonymous and aggregated. No one can see the statistics of your environment but you!
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Q - What is it?
NINJA allows you to quickly view the annual costs of maintaining data in your environment. Simply click on the $, adjust the annual GB cost to reflect the true cost for your IT organization and see how much you are paying to maintain shares, file types and users in your environment
Q - If I have different storage tiers, where can I plug different costs per GB?
Today we only enable to you to enter one value. You can enter an average cost if you scan multiple tiers in one run
Q - What if I do not know my annual cost per GB?
The cost calculator starts with a default value of $20 per GB/year - if you do not know exactly how much you are spending per GB/year, you can use the default value
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EXPORT
Q - How do I export?
Export is available from the File Resource Management reports (cover flow). Simply click on the export icon on the top right of each report.
If you have specific reports you are interested in please let us know by clicking the feedback button.
Q - What am I exporting?
Once the export is complete you get a list of all the files (including: size, paths, create and modify dates, owners etc.) for the files that generated the summary report you exported.
The export will include a record for each file and folder scanned.
You can open the the CSV file with excel or other tools or use a program to clean your environment from the files you do not need.
Q - How long does it take to complete an export?
The duration of an export depends on the number of files in a report. You get a line for each file and folder scanned.
The export interface provides you with an estimate of the time it would take to complete it.
You can reduce the number of files reported in the export (and the time it takes to export) by applying a size based filter.
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SUPPORT
Q - If I have a question or a problem how do I get support?
We want to make you successful, any question or problems you encounter can be answered at our support page www.getsatisfaction.com/Aprigo or at our forums.
You can use the support link on the website or send us feedback via the feedback link on the application
Q - How can I provide you with log files to troubleshoot my issue?
If you have an issue with a particular scan and would like Aprigo to take a look, please click the feedback button in Aprigo NINJA. From the feedback page, then click "Send a Log" and select the scan that had issues. This will send a log to Aprigo support.
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KNOWN ISSUES
Anti-virus and Aprigo NINJA
We recommend to disable anti-virus prior to NINJA installations or upgrades.
If install or upgrade were incomplete or left the application in an unknown state, please disable the anti-virus and re-install.