Definition of a Data Contributor
NSS subscriptions are licensed according to the capabilities of the software that you use (Solution Areas) and the number of active directory accounts that contribute data to the environment being managed with those capabilities. This is called ‘Data Contributors’.
Data Contributors are defined as unique file and folder owners that fulfill the following two criteria:
- They own files or folders in the repositories managed by NSS
Every file and folder has an owner, this is an attribute of the object in the file system. The owner is an account in Active Directory and is identified by their Security Identifier (SID). Owners can be service accounts, regular user accounts, shared accounts, or similar. NSS counts unique SIDs for all files and folders managed by NSS. - The owner has been resolved within the last 90 days
If an account has been deleted from Active Directory, the owner SID can no longer be resolved and NSS will classify the owner as ‘unknown’. These deleted accounts are counted as Data Contributors up to 90 days after deletion. After these initial 90 days, the account will no longer be counted as a Data Contributor. All accounts in this state (‘unknown’ for more than 90 days) are counted as a single Data Contributor. This is done in order to avoid the number of Data Contributors accumulating over time (as Active Directory accounts are created and deleted).
EXAMPLES
Here are some examples of different situations that clarify how Data Contributors are counted.
| Example | Explanation |
|---|---|
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1. One user, one Account
In this example you have one user using the same account to save data in several different folders or areas of the file services. This is only counted as one Data Contributor. |
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2. One user, many accounts
In this example, the user is using two (or more) accounts to save data in the file services. This is counted as two distinct Data Contributors, even though the actual user is the same. |
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3. Shared accounts
In some cases, users might share logins for the same account. This is counted as only one Data Contributor, even though there are several actual users. |
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4. Users without data
In this example, only user A has saved data to the managed repositories. Account B has an account in Active Directory but has not saved any files to the repositories that NSS manages. Account B is not counted as a Data Contributor, and so this example would yield only one Data Contributor for Account A. |
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5. Disabled accounts
This examples shows an account that has been disabled at some point in the past, but still owns data in the repositories managed by NSS. Since the account is not deleted, and since the account exists as an owner in the managed repositories, this would count as a Data Contributor. |
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6. Deleted accounts
In this example, both account A and B have been deleted and cannot be resolved in Active Directory. Account A was deleted over 90 days ago and will therefore not be counted as a Data Contributor. However, Account B was deleted less than 90 days ago so this account will be counted as a Data Contributor. The SID for Account A, and all other SIDs for accounts that were deleted more than 90 days ago, will be summarised as ‘Unknown’. This means that if you have several thousand accounts that have been deleted more than 90 days ago, all those accounts will only be counted as one single Data Contributor. |
Need further assistance?
If you have more questions regarding how Northern counts the number Data Contributors, please contact your sales representative at salesglobal@northern.net.