Archiving strategies

[Nick007]

Hello
 
First of all I want to appoligize if my question is stupid or something like that.
I have task to implement enterprise vault 8.0 SP4 in one company to archive all mailboxes. I have one storage device which is visible from EV server and I have one Centera device.
My idea is that first archive mailbox on storage device and then, let say after one year, move data older from one year to centera.
My problem is that I do not know how I can configure this task.
Can I make configuration that this task is complete automatically done?
Can you give me some instructions how can I do this?
Can you recommend me some document about best practice for mail archiving, creating policies etc?
Also if you have some step by step manual for implementation and configuration of enterprise vault?
 
Thanks a lot
 
Regards
 
Nick

[TonySterling · Accepted solution]

Hi Nick,

for your question about migrating to Centera, that wont work.  You can migrate to tape after a year but not to centera.

For the best practice docs, check out the article section of Connect.  There are lots of information there.

Additionally, have you been through the EV training?  If not, you need to if you want to be successfull working with this product.

The Install and Configure guide and the Setting up Exchange Archiving docs that are part of the install media is what you need.

[Nick_White]

Hi,

there isn't a migration option for Centera that will do this automatically as the migration option is based around migration to tape. You could potentially do it another way though.

There is a tool called NTFSCenteraMigrator which is installed in the Enterprise Vault installation directory on the EV server. This tool allows you to move a Vault Store partition from NTFS onto a Centera but it moves the whole partition regardless of data age. The possible workflow would be to enable partition rollover, say once a quarter and then when you hit the end of the year you could use NTFSCenteraMigrator to move the partition for the first quarter to the Centera. After the next quarter you would migrate partition 2 and so on.

It's not an ideal solution as there would be manual involvement required, so it might be worth putting it forward as an idea for a product enhancement, to include other devices in the collection migration area so that it happens automatically

[Liam_Finn1]

I have a silly question for you Nick, Why not just store it on a Centera in the first place and bypass the NTFS storage? Then the retention is managed for you, you have high availability and it will meet all your needs in one. It will also save you the costs of having to maintain disk for the NTFS partition which you can reallocate for other uses 

[JesusWept3]

I would recommend not using NTFSCenteraMigrator if you can avoid it for the fact that is unfortunately very slow and during the migration period users access to archived items.

The problem with the Partition Rollover idea is that you can only have one partition open at a time, and if you want to move everything to the centera you will have to stop archiving until the migration is done. Unless that is the NTFSCenteraMigrator can move everything to a closed partition, it may do but i don't think it does

[Nick007]

Hi

My first idea was to use storage disks for some users and Centera for other users, but one of my bosses suggest that I need first archive mailboxes to storage and then to Centera.
Can someone tell me how much is slower to get data from Centera vs storage?
And I have another one question.
In documentation I found terms safety copy and when safety copy are deleted. SO what are they safety copy? My guesses are that safety copy is pointers in mailbox to archived messages. Is that correct?

Regards

[TonySterling]

The slowness JW2 is referring to is the NTFS to Centera Migration.  Centera performance on exports to PST may still be slower than NTFS but it is not as bad as it used to be.  I think overall performance depends on the health of the Centera and you will see drops in performance when it is doing its self healing thing.

You need to choose one storage device or the other and not count on migrating old items to the Centera.  You can do what you wanted and have some users on NTFS and some on Centera but if memory serves they will not be singled instanced between the two Vault Stores.  Personally, I would decide on one storage device and go with it.

The Safety Copy is the pending item.  When you archive an item it will switch to pending (safety copy) and will stay pending until the archived item has been backed up in the Vault Store Partition or for Centera, replicated.

Regards,

[Joe_Larson]

We archive directly to our Centera, and performance has never been much of an issue.  The vault stores are on the Centera, although the index locations are on the EV server's "real" disks, which are actually SAN.  We looked at partition rollover, but couldn't see any use for it as long as the partitions were all on the Centera.

We're using EV 8.0.3, journaling up to 100,000 unique messages per day on a single Windows 2003 server.  Email is mixed Exchange 2003 and 2007.

I would also agree with Tony about the EV training.  It helps a lot.

Joe

[JesusWept3]

like tony said i was referring to the NTFSToCentraMigrator itself, especially when you have large vault stores and partitions to go against.
Centera can have a number of things that slow it down outside of that, such as ClipExists,a dn if you are doing rebuild of the Centera indexes or a node is bad and it has to do a deep scan, performance is pretty dreadful too

Also migration from one centera to another (for instance you have a new gen of centera) it is awfully slow

FWIW though with Partition Roll Overs, its not possible on a centera