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scalli's avatar
scalli
Level 2
11 years ago

Extracting Enterprise Vault Archive Data

Hi All,

I'm new to Enterprise Vault and I'm having a little trouble putting together an implementation plan for extracting emails out of an Exchange/EV environment using .PST files for import into a brand new environment on a new domain.

So far I have come up with the following rough idea:

  1. Disable archiving across all mailboxes to prevent any further transfers of data
  2. Export all archived mailboxes to individual .PST files and import into new environment
  3. Delete all archive stubs from Exchange mailboxes to prevent future conflicts
  4. Export all Exchange mailboxes to individual .PST files and import into new environment

I was hoping to get some comments on this plan.  It might be that there is a far simpler solution that I'm not aware of.  The idea of restoring all mail items to their original location is not an option due to capacity reasons.

Also, I've been having some trouble researching a method for completing step 1.  There doesn't seem to be any way of disabling Enterprise Vault other than setting the archive policy to only capture emails older than 1000 years (or something similar).  Am I mistaken here?  I would have thought this would be an easy task.

Any information would be greatly appreciated!!

- Scalli

Best Practice
Enterprise Vault
Information Governance
Integration
Windows Server (2003-2008)
  • ChayDouglas's avatar
    ChayDouglas
    Level 4
    11 years ago

    Sounds like you are de-commissioning Enterprise Vault?

    We recently had to do this for a customer and it has taken the best part of half a year.

    The steps they took were to:
    Stop users from archiving (which you seemed to have done now)
    Increase Mailbox quota
    Export back to Current Exchange
    Migrate to new Exchange

    The other option we looked at was exactly the one you suggested ie export to PST and ingest the data to the new Exchange Server.

    In this case, you will need to insure that the PSTs have a scratch area where they can temporarily sit and a script that will ingest PSTs back into the new Exchange environment.

    With regards to shortcuts, there is a script you can run against the current exchange server that will delete enterprise vault shortcuts from each mailbox:

    http://exitcodezero.wordpress.com/2013/08/12/how-to-delete-all-ev-shortcuts-from-a-mailbox/

    See Note 3:
     

    Search-Mailbox -Identity {Identity} -SearchQuery "IPM.NOTE.EnterpriseVault.shortcut" -DeleteContent

    You can then gather all the mailbox aliases and script this.

    I'm not too sure about the PST ingestion script though.

    Cheers
    Chay