Forum Discussion

Shashank17's avatar
Shashank17
Level 3
9 years ago

Release Disabled Mailbox Archive License in Enterprise Vault

Hi,

We are currently running Enterprise Vault 11.0.1 CHF4 and have around 10K Mailboxes in Exchange out of which around 9K are  enabled for enterprise vault mailbox archiving.

When a user leaves the organization, his AD account is disabled and Exchange Mailbox is disabled.

Once the account is disabled in AD, we remove the account from the provisioning group in AD and run the provisioning task in normal mode in Enterprise Vault .

I have gone through the technote: https://www.veritas.com/support/en_US/article.000088035

After running the SQL queries, we have the below result:

A) Select Count(*) from ExchangeMailboxEntry where mbxarchivingstate = 1

Count: 8540 users

B) Select Count(*) from ExchangeMailboxEntry where mbxarchivingstate = 2

Count: 50 users

C) Select Count(*) from ExchangeMailboxEntry where mbxarchivingstate = 0

Count: 25 users

However Vault Store Usage Report shows that we have around 9700 Active Archives.

Total number of active users in provisioning group in AD doesnt match the count of active archives in EV.

I need to know if there is any way we can release the licenses of those archive mailboxes in Enterprise Vault whose AD account is disabled or no longer exists.

This way we can match the count of users in provisioning group with the number of licenses assigned to active archives in Enterprise Vault.

Note: I do not wish to delete mailbox archive from Enterprise Vault as we have got a retention period.

Please help.

Regards,

Shashank

 

  • GertjanA's avatar
    GertjanA
    Moderator
    9 years ago

    Hello Shashank.

    In the usage report, you will always see 'active archives'. That's the header it has.

    As you perhaps know, if you define the license count for EV, you enter a 'gentlemens agreement' with Veritas. As example, you buy a license for 8000 mailboxes to be archived. You get a licensefile (and the bill :-) ). there is no actual licensecount checking. If you archive 7000 mailboxes, you are safe. If you archive 9000 you theoratically have 1000 mailboxes unlicensed, but EV WILL archive those, and WILL keep working. You also need to take in account (as far as I know this has not changed) that you do not need a license for 'functional mailboxes'. (rooms, groupmailboxes etc). It is only if your organisation grows exponatially (i.e. you add 2000 user mailboxes) you might want to revise your actual licenses required. The process you describe seems to miss the step of disabling the mailbox for archiving, but removing the account is from AD is also a step in this.

    According to your way of working the count of the mailboxes in the provisioning group, excluding those 'non personal' mailboxes, is the count for your licenses.

     

    • Shashank17's avatar
      Shashank17
      Level 3
      9 years ago
      Hi Gertjan,

      Thank you for taking some time out and replying to my message.
      I can understand we still miss a step to disable mailbox archiving in EV before disabling the account in Ad and Exchange. Certainly we will take that step into consideration however I would like to know if it's important from license point of view if I enable more than 3K user mailboxes for archiving as we will fall short of 1K licenses.
      A) Number of active archives displayed in usage report equals to number of licenses consumed?
      B) If not, Can we ever match the count of users in provisioning group with the output from command :
      Select Count(*) from ExchangeMailboxEntry where mbxarchivingstate = 1
      Still not clear as per my thinking number of active archives which are consuming licenses should equal the number of users in provisioning group
      • GertjanA's avatar
        GertjanA
        Moderator
        9 years ago

        Hello Shahshank, no problem.

        Forget the Usage Report. That will always state the full amount of archives you have. As example, im my environment, it reads 153475 active archives. There is however no connection between EV and Exchange anymore. = no archiving.

        The count of a provisioning group is a start, but you need to lower that number with the functional/group mailboxes you have. In theorie (and in other words), you need a license per FTE, if you archive everyone in the company.

        I advise to get in contact with the licensing department of Veritas, as they can assist in these kind of queries. At a previous company, I used below query to calculate what was needed.

        USE EnterpriseVaultDirectory

        Select distinct NRusers=count(mbxntuser)

        from Exchangemailboxentry

        where mbxarchivingstate = 1

        and mbxdisplayname not like 'fm%' -- functional mailbox

        and mbxdisplayname not like 'rs.%' -- resource mailbox

        and legacymbxdn not like '%/cn=fm.%' -- functional mailbox

        and legacymbxdn not like '%/cn=rs.%' -- resource mailbox

        and mbxdisplayname not like '%zz disabled%' -- disabled users

        and mbxdisplayname not like '%zz old%' -- obsolete archives

        GJ