Additional EVault Servers

[smlopes]

Right now we just have 1 EVault server for email archiving, if we need to add another Evault server, what is needed to get the second one added?

[JesusWept3]

It's as simple as running the setup utility, next next finish and then running the Configuration Wizard and putting in the site name and then it will add the machine, then when you open up the vault admin console you will see the second server

[JesusWept3 · Accepted solution]

I guess the better answer would be to :

Download and read the compatibility list here:
http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH38537

Make sure the hardware and software meets the requirements, if you can it'd probably best to try and acquire hardware that would be EV10 compatibile (8 core 8GB, Windows 2008 R2 x64 etc)

Install all the pre-reqs such as Powershell, NET Framework, IIS with the proper components such as ASP, Microsoft Outlook, MSMQ without Active Directory Integration, make sure that the EVAdmin is a local admin on the machine and that you have created an outlook profile to initialize it.

Keep running through the deployment scanner until its checks all come back green.
The run the installation and choose the install path and make sure that the license you have covers you for what you are trying to do in terms of extra capacity.

Then after the installation has completed you will probably have to reboot the machine then after you logon, you will run the configuration and then be asked whether you wish to join an existing site or create a new site, choose the option to join an existing site and it will ask you for the directory server and after that it will create the services and what not and you can then open the VAC to configure new tasks, new vault stores etc

[smlopes]

so then how would you load balance those two servers then?

[TonySterling]

That isn't just a simple answer.  How many Exchange servers do you have?  How many users on each? How much mail do the users get per day?

Once you have an idea of how you want to divide up the work then you can look at your options on moving the users archives from one server to the other.

I would highly recommend engaging a professional to give your environment a once over to get a fully thought out solution moving forward. 

[JesusWept3]

agreed, typically the most exchange server processing you would do on a single server would be 5 exchange servers to one EV server, maybe less depending if they are particularly large exchange servers.

Doing a move archive between the two servers would only really be recommended if you were going to move existing exchange servers from one EV server to another, and Storage and the processing of storage is bogging down performance.

But for the most part if you have a bunch of users in a vault store hosted on EVServer1 and you move the task to EVServer2, there will be cross network communication from one server to the other, but it isn't that big a deal, especially when you factor in the EV8+ OSIS model and now with Exchange 2010 DAG's, you potentially will always have users that are not "homed" on the same server as their vault store.

I guess the most important question is, why do you want a new server?
 

[smlopes]

I apologize for the questions. I'm new to Evault archiving and am just trying to figure out what's best for our environment and how does it compare to others that have their environment already configured.We have obtained consulting services from Symantec partner, however, the environment we have, I haven't found anyone yet that has experience configuring it with Evault- neither Symantec nor Symantec partner. We are the minority of the population and its been challenging.

We have 2 Exchange 2010 SP1 MBX servers,1 DAG, roughly 4000 users. TMG 2010 SP1 and F5 load balancers. We are using TMG web publishing rule for Evault, an external DNS entry had to be published in order for it to work somewhat (still getting extra login prompts). Right now we have 1 https URL published on TMG for 1 Evault server(Exchange mailbox archiving services only being used right now), what is needed when I have to add another Evault server (same service)? One option I'm thinking is to modify existing publishing rule and use a server farm? Another is to edit web.config and use relative URL?

Can we load balance internal and external Evault traffic and what is best method? 

Can we have different external web application URL for Outlook and OWA in same desktop policy? 

We already have 1 Evault server for Exchange mailbox archiving, if we decide to enable Sharepoint archiving for example, consultant recommended building another EVault server, is that really necessary?

If we end up with Exchange archiving and Sharepoint archiving services on 2 separate servers, what is better solution for High Availibility of services? From what I read and told, there are limited number of solutions - building blocks, Veritas clustering, MS clustering. They either involve manual configuration to failover, or the "automatic" failover is not really automatic because during the shutting down of services and startup of new services, services would be down and would be considered an "outage".