Stored Data Integration Guide › Deploying the FSA › Deploy FSA Remote Connectors › Why Deploy an FSA Remote Connector?

Why Deploy an FSA Remote Connector?

It may be necessary for reasons of security or efficiency to run the scanning job on a remote machine. Installing the FSA Remote Connector on a remote machine allows you, in effect, to run a scan on that machine. Scanned items that require policy processing are sent back across the network to the FSA.

For example:

• If you want to scan Microsoft SharePoint items, either install the FSA on the SharePoint server, or deploy an FSA Remote Connector on the SharePoint server. We recommend using the FSA Remote Connector to reduce the processing required on the SharePoint server. You cannot use an FSA to scan a remote SharePoint server.
• If scanning a large database, it may be more efficient to install the FSA Remote Connector on the machine hosting the DBMS. This prevents the bottleneck of having to retrieve database records across the network to the FSA for analysis.
• If you need to scan sensitive folders on a remote machine that cannot be accessed by a UNC path, deploy an FSA Remote Connector on that machine.
• If a scanning job is configured to exclude a large proportion of files, then it is more efficient to identify these exclusions on the host machine, rather than retrieving all files across the network to the FSA for analysis.