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kylehancock's avatar
kylehancock
Level 3
11 years ago
Solved

Enterprise Vault Retention Settings

Hi everyone,

I as of yesterday have been handed responsibility of the Enterprise Vault for my company. I have a little bit of experience with the product, but right just winging it until I full understand it. We of course have no documentation available so I have been reading through Symantec posts here on the forums. I do however have a few questions when it comes to emails being deleted from the vault and the retention period involved.

As of today our site's Storage Expiry is set to have emails expire based on the Archived Date. Now that's cool, but I can't find anywhere in the VAC which tells me how many months or years these emails are kept based on the archived date. It could be 6 months from the archived date or it could be 3 years. I don't know and I cannot find anything telling me this in the VAC.

I attempted to look up Storage Expiry reports in the event viewer, but could not find the event ID's 7085 or 7086 since we are on EV v10.02.1112. Our email environment is Exchange 2010. On the VAC, when I look at mailboxes in the Archives, I see the Expired Items say "Will be deleted", so I know they are deleting.

That being said, does anyone in the community here know where I can in the VAC or otherwise and find how many months or years emails are kept in the vault based on the Archived Date? When I look at the Archive Settings for the site, the retention category has been labeled Business. When I look in Exchange though, I see no retention policy called Business, so my impression is this an Enterprise Vault retention policy. I have found no way to see the date range associated with the this "Business" policy either.

Can anyone point me in the right direction?

Enterprise Vault
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Windows Server (2003-2008)

7 Replies

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  • GabeV's avatar
    GabeV
    Level 6
    11 years ago

    Hi kylehancock,

    You need to take a look at the retention categories in the Admin Console. In the console, expand Enterprise Vault > Directory > EV Site > Policies > Retention Categories to configure the retentions:

    Creating a new retention category
    http://www.symantec.com/docs/HOWTO108202

    The retention categories are assigned to the mailboxes through the Provisioning Groups. These groups are configured under Targets > Exchange > [your domain] > Provisioning Groups.

    Here is the link to the EV documentation. Look for your EV version and look for to the 'Setting up Exchange Server Archiving' PDF for mroe details:

    Enterprise Vault Product Documentation
    http://www.symantec.com/docs/DOC2200

    I hope this helps.

  • AndrewB's avatar
    AndrewB
    Moderator
    11 years ago

    i think you're on the right track but just to add to what the guys have shown you, see where it says retention period? that's how long the messages associated with the retention category will stick around, after their archived date, before being eligible for the expiry process to remove them from the system. have you checked if expiry is running? it's a site setting.

  • kylehancock's avatar
    kylehancock
    Level 3
    11 years ago

    Wow, that was a quick reponse! Thank you guys for the help, I see it's something I just scanned over and didn't realize it was right in front of me.

    Ok, last question from the newbie. The "Business" retention policy is in the retention category selection, and says emails will be kept forever as shown below. Ok cool deal. however upon more digging I found something odd and was wondering if I didn't have a contradiction of policies going on for EV.

    Retention Category_Business.jpg

    When I look at the settings of the retention policy above, I see this:

    Retention Base Expiry Settings.jpg

    I find this strange as my options are "Inherit from Site Settings", Modifed Date, and Archived Date, but the Inherit part is selected. When I go look at my site settings storage expiry and archive settings tabs I see this below.

    Storage Expiry Tab:

    Site Storage Expiry.jpg

    Archive Settings Tab:

    Site Archive Settings.jpg

    When I go look at any mailbox in my org, it says their expired items will be deleted. So my question is do I have a conflict going on in the archive settings? Is mail supposed to be purging from the archive and can't because it's being told to use a policy that keeps mail forever?

    Thanks again for the help guys!

  • AndrewB's avatar
    AndrewB
    Moderator
    11 years ago

    the "forever" retention period means that when expiry runs, no items will be identified as eligible to be deleted. so it's not necessarily a conflict but it's working the way it's configured to.

  • GabeV's avatar
    GabeV
    Level 6
    11 years ago

    If the retention setting is set to forever, then short answer is yes. That's why Storage Expiry is not deleting any emails from the storage. If you change the retention category to, let's say, two years, then any emails older than two years would be deleted. Of course, this is based in the Archived or Modified date. In this case, it would be Archived Date.

    Also, for the Site default Retention Category:

    Retention Category. This value is used in various places in the Administration Console to provide a default value for wizards. It is also used when no retention category value has been specified.

    I hope this helps.

  • kylehancock's avatar
    kylehancock
    Level 3
    11 years ago

    It does help. Thanks again guys! I meant to split solution this with everyone but can't get it back!