Archive process in EV 10

[Chandra_Sekhar]

Hi

we have 6 Exchange servers (EX 2010) & 6 EV server in our environment. I see lot of provisioning task & EV policies created in our infra. Each Mailbox policy associated with multiple provisioning task.

I would like to know how exactely Archive process works during the schedules ? how the provisioning taks inter-related works together with archiving.?

Many Thanks

Chandra

[JesusWept3]

Well the provisioning task is just to assign people different policies
If you have multiple provisioning groups with the exact same settings, like automatically enable, all use the same pst migration policy, desktop policy, mailbox policy, all going to the same vault store etc, then you can probably just combine them.

But where it works best is say you have an archiving policy that effects everyone, but you want to give them a different end user experience, such as these users will have Virtual Vault, these users will just be AE only, then you have two Provisioning Groups, both use the same Mailbox policy, but different Desktop Policies... one that enables Vault Cache and virtual Vault, the other that doesn't

Also you may have a subset of users that you want to archive, but don't want them to have the ev client, so you have a policy that is set to archive items, but not replace with a shortcut, and not delete the original, so then you create that archiving policy and assign it to a group that those users reside in.

Then when the provisioning runs, it goes through each provisioning group and finds the users in Active Directory, and assigns the provisioning and policies in the ExchangeMailboxEntry table, and then when the archiving task synchronizes the mailbox, it will synchronize it with the policies assigned from provisioning

And simply when the Archiving Task hits its schedule, it loads up the policy set in the users hidden message, which determines how old an item has to be before being archived, whether its going to do Quota based archiving, whether to archive unread items etc etc 

And lastly after the user has been provisioned and synchronized, when the user opens up outlook, it will read the Hidden message and see the policy its been assigned from the desktop policy and determines which buttons to show (if any) and whether the user is allowed to use vault cache or virtual vault etc

[Ben_Watts]

Good post JesusWept, very nicely put.

Just to add to the above, EV works down the Provisioning Groups to find policies that apply to users, if User A is in Provisioning Group 1 and Provisioning Group 8 (both with different Policies and settings applied to them), then the settings found in the highest Provisioning Group in the VAC will apply to User A, once EV has found a user as part of a Provisioning Group, if EV finds that same user again we skip it and move on.

[GabeV · Accepted solution]

Hello Chandra,

This technote explains the archiving process in Enterprise Vault:

General Storage Process Flow
http://www.symantec.com/docs/HOWTO84800

Also for the provisioning task and group question, BW and JW3 already covered most of the provisioning process.

I hope this helps.

[Chandra_Sekhar]

Thanks Jesus

Just to make clear. Provisioning tasks run before the archiving schedule or during the schedule time.

1)If its during the archive schedule time Firstly the provisioning runs and find the users in AD and  assigns the provisioning and policies in the ExchangeMailboxEntry table.

2)The archive tasks will contact the respective servers and it will archive the E-mails from user mailbox based on the mailbox policies.


Please correct me if i mentioned anything wrong .

The other question that i have how EV wil come to know which E-mail it has to archive. Lets consider the below example

I've created a policy to archive all the E-mails when the mailbox limit crossed 70 %(mailbox max limit is 1 GB).  

It would be good if you provide the information in details steps.

[Chandra_Sekhar]

Thanks Gabe...

[JesusWept3]

So typically you have the following

1. Provisioning set to run twice per day, for example, 7am and 7pm
2. Mailbox Synchronization to run twice per day, for example 8am and 8pm
3. Archiving Task scheduled tor run from 10pm to 3am
4. Backups scheduled to run from 3am to 7am

That way no process steps on each other
The provisioning runs at 7am, synchronizes AD and Exchange changes to any mailbox, along with any changes you have made in your provisioning groups, it then adds the user or updates the existing user in the EV Directory database

Then at 8am, provisioning should have completed, Synchronization then takes place
It connects to each mailbox and updates the EV Hidden Message , with all the settings of the Desktop and Mailbox Archiving policies, which may have been updated by a user changing a policy setting, or maybe the user has switched provisioning groups, they now have to be sync'd to have the correct archiving policies set

So when archiving takes place, it does the following
1. Connects to the mailbox and reads the hidden message
2. It determines settings like, should it create a shortcut, should it archive items that are unread? how old should a mail item be before its archived? should it archive large large messages first etc
3. It then scans each message in each folder and sorts it in to a list. For instance if you have the checkbox "Start with items larger than".... it will sort that list in to largest to smallest and start archiving through the top of the list to the bottom
4. After it has archived the maximum messages per pass, it will then go on to the next mailbox

The messages per pass are configured in the Task properties for the exchange server
by default it's set to 1000 messages per pass... meaning the maximum it will archive at one time is 1000 messages, if there are more messages still to archive, if it finishes archiving all the other mailboxes, it will come back to that mailbox and archive another 1000 messages

The reason for this, is you may have a number of huge mailboxes, and the archiving run spends all its time on a few mailboxes, and archives nothing in any of the other mailboxes because it just ran out of time

As for the Quota based archiving, here is a good overview of Quota based archiving
https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/blogs/quota-based-archiving-how-it-works-and-why-you-may-wro...

[GabeV]

You're very welcome