The Art of SQL Server FILESTREAM - Red Gate Software

Chapter 12: Planning, Configuration and Best PracticesBy default, NTFS creates a secondary file name for every file that you create in the NTFSvolume. These secondary file names are called short file names, and they follow the legacy8.3 naming convention. Creation of short file names on folders that have a large numberof files is very resource intensive, because the system needs to ensure uniqueness. It doesthis by matching the newly created name with the short file name of all the other filespresent in the folder.Short file name generation is turned on by default. However, short file names are neededonly if you expect 16-bit applications to read your files, which is highly unlikely on today'sproduction servers. In addition, the data you store in the FILESTREAM data containershould not be directly accessed by any application other than SQL Server. This meansthat you can safely turn off short file name creation on disk volumes where you store theFILESTREAM data.You can use the command line tool fsutil.exe to disable short file names on yoursystem. To first check whether it is already disabled, you can query the current setting byrunning the query shown in Listing 12-1 in the command window.fsutil.exe behavior query disable8dot3Listing 12-1:Querying the short file name setting.This will return the current value configured for this setting, as shown in Figure 12-1.Figure 12-1:The current setting for short file names.440