SSAS Cube Dimension Processing Fails Reporting: File system error: A FileStore error from WriteFile occurred

Question

Hi,
I have a SSAS Cube Database for which the processing had been stopped since the year 2012, but as the requirements have again come up, this cube needs to be processed on a daily basis again, to refresh the cube with new incoming data.
As i was testing the cube processing steps before finally re-activating the cube processing in production, i came across a weird error while doing a manual processing for a Dimension.
File system error: A FileStore error from WriteFile occurred. Physical file: \\?\D:\MSAS10.MSSQLSERVER\OLAP\Data\Citi.184.db\Dim Extended Data.0.dim\54.Extended Data.ksstore. Logical file: . . Errors in the OLAP storage engine: An error occurred
while the 'Extended Data' attribute of the 'ExtendedData' dimension from the 'Citi' database was being processed.
This error came to me while i was doing a process update for the dimension, i even tried to do a Process Full for the same dimension which did not help. I then did a Unprocess and then a Process Full, which didn't work as well.
Can anyone please help me with this issue. I am using the SQL Server 2008 where the cube is hosted and the processing used to work fine earlier, but now its failing with this error.
Thanks

Answer 1

This looks like the 4GB string store limit. If you can upgrade to SQL Server 2012 Analysis Services, you can change a simple setting and grow beyond that 4GB string store limit.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg471589(SQL.110).aspx
If you can't upgrade, what data is in that ExtendedData attribute? If it's a meaningless surrogate key that you don't need users to see, you can use this trick to avoid the 4GB string store limit:
http://cwebbbi.wordpress.com/2012/08/10/storage-and-the-namecolumn-and-keycolumns-properties/ But if it's something the users need to see, there's not an easy way to fix it without upgrading to SSAS 2012.
http://artisconsulting.com/Blogs/GregGalloway