IRIS (for Health, HS HC, HS) DICOM interoperability adapters use the filesystem to store raw messages, the directory used can be configured in the StorageLocation production settings, obviously this is a big issue in mirrored environments if/when a mirror failover occur.
Having an High Availability shared directory between mirror members is expensive/complicated from MANY point of view (resources, configuration, maintenance, backup, security, etc.).
When an async DR is in place things are even much more complicated.
As it stands, using IRIS DICOM interoperability in mirror configuration it's a nightmare.
I understand that in some use cases the size of DICOM raw messages is significant (sometimes GBs each) and storing them in the database may impact performance and other aspects, however there are use cases where the DICOM raw messages are tiny (max 1K)
A real use case we have implemented and deployed of tiny raw DICOM messages is when IRIS is used to orchestrate archiving of studies between AETs, we use commands like CFIND, CMOVE etc. and never download a study in IRIS. In our system the biggest DICOM raw message file in 1K, no big deal to have it stored in a Global Stream in the database.
Unfortunately in IRIS it's not possible to change the IRIS DICOM raw message storage from File Stream to Global Stream.
The idea is to provide the option to use global streams stored in the database instead of external files to store DICOM raw messages, this would solve the issue in mirror configurations.
If size is a concerns, add a proper warning in the documentation that using Global Stream in some scenario may impact system performance.
The benefit of this idea is to allow using a IRIS mirror configuration for IRIS DICOM interoperability "out of the box", without the need to implement an High Availability shared directory for storing DICOM raw messages and works nicely "out of the box" even when using Async mirror members for Disaster Recovery.
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