Forum Discussion

Jakob's avatar
Jakob
Level 5
6 years ago

Storage Expiry leads to unwanted shortcut deletion

Hi @all, I have some trouble with a EV installation and I need your thoughts here: It´s a brand new installation with 12.3 and is planned for Mailbox and Journal Archiving. All items which were ar...
  • ChrisLangevin's avatar
    ChrisLangevin
    6 years ago

    I know it doesn't seem relevant that the article is about expiry in Report Mode while you are not running that, but they both stem from the same issue. Here's why.

    There are two components involved in expiry for this issue. There is the Storage subsystem, which handles expiry of the actual archived items, and there is the Archiving Task, which is the part of EV that talks to Exchange, and it handles the expiry of the shortcuts. From an architectural standpoint, these are very separate parts of EV, even though in this case both are collaborating to perform "expiry."

    When Storage performs expiry on the archived items, it has a series of conditions it checks to determine whether an item is eligible to be expired. This obviously starts with the age of the item, but then it also considers things like the Retention Category's "Prevent automatic deletion..." setting, the archive's "Delete expired items..." setting, whether expiry is set to Report Mode on the Site, whether the items are on legal hold from a discovery product, whether another pass through the classification engine is required, and probably some more that I am forgetting.

    When the Archive Task performs expiry on the shortcuts, it checks the age of the shortcut but it doesn't include a check on every one of those other conditions that Storage checks. In the article you cited, this manifests as deletion of shortcuts even though Storage Expiry is in Report Mode; in your case, it manifests as deletion of shortcuts despite the "Prevent automatic deletion..." setting on the Retention Category. But both stem from the basic underlying fact that Storage considers many more factors when deciding whether an item is eligible for expiry than the Archiving Task considers when deciding whether an item's shortcut is eligible for expiry.

    While it certainly seems undesirable that the two components would make different eligibility decisions about objects that represent the same item, it is also true that there are performance and design drawbacks to attempting to duplicate all of the Storage logic in the Archive Task's handling of shortcuts. So that's the tradeoff we're dealing with in saying this is "expected behavior."

    I hope that explanation answers more questions than it raises. :smileyhappy:

    --Chris

Jakob's avatar
Jakob
Level 5

Hi Pradeep,

thank you for this TechNotes. But this issue didn´t only came up when the expiry runs in the reporting mode. It also happens in the regular mode. So it´s not really the same thing... 

And the technote is from 2013!?! 

I also will contact the Account Manager for this topic.

Jakob

Pradeep-Papnai's avatar
Pradeep-Papnai
Level 6
6 years ago

Hi Jacob,

In my understanding, it doesn’t matter if you run expiry in Normal OR Report mode. Once you set Schedule for expiry then shortcut will start to expire post retention period even though you are stopping EV item expiry using retention policy “Prevent automatic deletion of expired items whit this category”.

Just came across with one other defect TechNote that is opposite of your issue where shortcut expiry doesn’t happen even though actual item expired, leaving orphaned shortcut because of schedule is not selected.

I am not sure about the current status of all these old defects, possibly you can raise support case and get official answer.

Regards
Pradeep

  • Jakob's avatar
    Jakob
    Level 5
    6 years ago

    I´ve already opened a case for this but it was closed with the resolution:

    "Shortcut Expiry is expected behavior. If Storage Expiry is scheduled on the Site settings, then Shortcut Expiry by retention category automatically occurs whenever the archiving task is run."...

    The helpdesk at Veritas Support was able to reproduce this behavior and escalated it to the backline which has closed it with the "expected behavior" solution.

    • ChrisLangevin's avatar
      ChrisLangevin
      Level 6
      6 years ago

      I know it doesn't seem relevant that the article is about expiry in Report Mode while you are not running that, but they both stem from the same issue. Here's why.

      There are two components involved in expiry for this issue. There is the Storage subsystem, which handles expiry of the actual archived items, and there is the Archiving Task, which is the part of EV that talks to Exchange, and it handles the expiry of the shortcuts. From an architectural standpoint, these are very separate parts of EV, even though in this case both are collaborating to perform "expiry."

      When Storage performs expiry on the archived items, it has a series of conditions it checks to determine whether an item is eligible to be expired. This obviously starts with the age of the item, but then it also considers things like the Retention Category's "Prevent automatic deletion..." setting, the archive's "Delete expired items..." setting, whether expiry is set to Report Mode on the Site, whether the items are on legal hold from a discovery product, whether another pass through the classification engine is required, and probably some more that I am forgetting.

      When the Archive Task performs expiry on the shortcuts, it checks the age of the shortcut but it doesn't include a check on every one of those other conditions that Storage checks. In the article you cited, this manifests as deletion of shortcuts even though Storage Expiry is in Report Mode; in your case, it manifests as deletion of shortcuts despite the "Prevent automatic deletion..." setting on the Retention Category. But both stem from the basic underlying fact that Storage considers many more factors when deciding whether an item is eligible for expiry than the Archiving Task considers when deciding whether an item's shortcut is eligible for expiry.

      While it certainly seems undesirable that the two components would make different eligibility decisions about objects that represent the same item, it is also true that there are performance and design drawbacks to attempting to duplicate all of the Storage logic in the Archive Task's handling of shortcuts. So that's the tradeoff we're dealing with in saying this is "expected behavior."

      I hope that explanation answers more questions than it raises. :smileyhappy:

      --Chris

      • Jakob's avatar
        Jakob
        Level 5
        6 years ago

        Hi Chris,

        thank you for this realy good explanation of the expiry parts of EV. It helps me to understand why it is like it is. 

        But from the customer/user/admin view it isn´t "expected behavior" at all if the expiry routines delete shortcuts automatically although the admin has configured not to delete this shortcuts autmatically.

        ChrisLangevin do you have an Idea when Veritas will solve this?