1.6 Application Storage

July 7th, 2025

RBAC required: bear: Database and Sharepoint storage configuration

Applications have different storage requirements. The type of storage required is embedded in the application metadata. An application may require any combination of the following:

None	No additional storage is required. Either the application is static or has very modest storage needs that are self contained within the application structure.
Database	The application requires access to a relational database.
File	The application requires access to a dedicated file storage area

You must have at least one BEAR database server available for BEAR itself.

For small scale applications, it is possible that no additional storage is required or that the BEAR application server, database and file sharepoint can all be located on the same host.

Application storage is entirely abstracted from physical storage and file systems which are managed separately.

In order to make use of database or file storage areas, such areas must already be registered to BEAR. There is no limit to the number of database and file storage locations that can be registered. The only restrictions are there only one BEAR database and one BEAR file storage area can be hosted on a system. For small low traffic deployments, it may be sufficient to host both database and file storage locally on the same host as the BEAR application server. However, as things scale out, hosting these on dedicated database or file share hosts will provide more flexibility.

View Storage
Add Storage
Edit Storage
Delete Storage

1.6.1 Viewing Current Application Storage

1. From the Admin Tools menu, select Application Storage.

2. The currently registered storage locations will be displayed.

This shows three storage areas: two database hosts and one file server host. All are online. Only one is currently in use. The database host at 192.168.1.64 is currently in use by just one application package: bear.

The Application Storge summary shows the following details at a glance:

• Registered database hosts
• Registered file server hosts
• Host IP addresses
• Applications packages using the storage location
• The status (up/green or down/red) of the storage location

1.6.2 Registering Application Storage

Additional storage areas can be added at any time. This also allows flexibility in how storage is assigned to applications. As some applications will have different throughput requirements and/or resiliency requirements, you can assign applications to the use the storage that is most suitable.

Prerequisites

Before registering a new storage location, you will need the following information:

1. IP address of the storage host
2. API port used for monitoring (this is 8082 by default).
3. Whether the API port uses TLS or not.
4. The type of resources hosted. Either Database, File server, or both.

Registering Storage Steps

Storage locations must be added before installing applications that will use them. And application cannot be reassigned to a different storage location once registered.

1. From the admin Tools menu, select Application Storage and activate the Add tab if not already active.

2. Fill in the storage location details from the information you gathered in the prerequisites.

3. Click Register to add the storage location.

1.6.3 Changing the IP Address of Application Storage

It may be desirable to change the IP address of a registered storage appliance. This could be to accommodate a real network configuration change on the storge host or, to point the storage to a new host.

You can change the IP address of file sharepoints and databases separately even if they are originally on the same host. Therefore, it is possible to use this feature to migrate a combined file server and database host to two dedicated hosts.

In the case of a new host, you must ensure that the new host has a consistent copy of the application storage. BEAR will not migrate databases or files to a new host.

1. From the admin Tools menu, select Application Storage and activate the Edit tab.

2. From the Host dropdown menu, select the existing storage host you want to change. Provide a New IP address.

3. Click Update to point BEAR to the new location.

1.6.4 Removing Application Storage

Deleting storage locations is simple. BEAR will not let you unregister a storage host that is currently in use by at least one application.

1. From the admin Tools menu, select Application Storage and activate the Delete tab.

2. From the Host dropdown menu, select the existing storage host you want to remove.
3. Click Delete to unregister the storage location.