Administering different EV versions from a single VAC ?

[ratty]

Changes to the work environment have me currently in one domain with EV8.0 also administering another trusted domain with EV7.5.  They are completely seperate instances, but I was wondering if they could be administered from a single VAC. 

Is this possible ? Do I have to install the 7.5 VAC into a different directory and run both ?

Thanks in advance.

[TSO]

hi ratty

I dont think you can.... as VAC reads from EVDirectory database, how would you read information about two different EV Directory database and display them in one VAC?

[JesusWept3]

well its not just that, but there are different elements such as Desktop Policies and Mailbox policies being split, Vault store groups etc etc, the MMC add in is very much tied to the version of EV that goes with it

[ratty]

TSO and JesusWept2,

The VAC is just an mmc.  You can add the EV snapin into an mmc to administer.  I have done this previously where I have also added eventvwr, services etc so I can see everything I need in the console.

When you add a second EV instance into the mmc, it asks for the directory server. So it does seem you can have two. 

I will also add to my original post that both instance are not only different domains, but different forests.  There is a two-way trust between the forests.

I ensured that I added domain b's credentials through the Auth Manager for domain A.  The instances show in the mmc, but when I try to expand the second (domain A) I get;

"failed to read for the directory computer xxxx. Failed to read the directory entry for enterprise vault"

Thoughts ?

[GertjanA]

I agree it is an add-in to the MMC. I also agree with TSO and JW.

The console version is tied to the EV-version.

What you might want to try is to install the Console for 7.5 in directory A, and the one from 8.0 in directory B. Then add them to the console, and test if that works.

We were unable to get this to work, but during the upgrade process of the sites, we monitored the sites via RDP. It took us about 3 weeks to upgrade all sites. Now all is same level = 1 MMC with several EV-console add-ins (each specified with it's own directory service)

[JesusWept3 · Accepted solution]

agreed with gertjan, no one is saying you can't administer multiple sites, its just that the MMC is fixed, and anytime new features get put in to EV it will has a direct configuration added to the MMC snap in as well

Take for instance Retention Categories, in EV8 they added the ability to set whether the retention category would expire by archived date, or modified date....in ev2007 it was a site only property

So when you open up an EV8 MMC against an EV2007 server, your MMC will most likely crash because it cannot read values that would normally be assigned to an EV8 retention category because it doesn't exist in EV2007

The same goes for Virtual Vault and vault cache which don't exist in 2007, or desktop policies that don't exist in 2007, or transaction history, vault store groups, storage types etc etc, the list goes on

[PJuster]

I would say that you could do this, if you install the VAC on a client into two different locations on disk, as I know that when you open the VAC the first time and you enter the directory servername in this is saved into the binary used for the VAC.  

So if you had it installed in two different locations this could work, but never been tried tho.

HTH

Paul

[Simon_Butler]

Had a similar requirement - unfortunately VACs are only supported against an EV infra of the same version, and it usually wont work.

2 separate EV infra of the same version in 2 different but trusted forests would work as you suggested via a blank MMC (with appropriate permissions).