Confirmation of “Windows Search” behaviour when “Content Strategy” set to “Do not store any items in cache” and no Shortcuts

[AL_G]

Hello

Background
I’ve been looking at more “aggressive”  policies around shortcut retention.
Among these is reduction in shortcut retention period (/even not having shortcuts at all).
However – whilst doing this I’ve noticed what looks like some serious “downsides” which could make this approach not feasible.
I want to confirm Windows Search behaviour in this scenario.

Scenario
Users (entirely reasonably) want to do "keyword" searches across all mail content.
In a scenario where "Content strategy" is set to "Do not store any items in cache"
From what I’ve read, this means that only “Header Cache Data” will be indexed / searchable via Windows Search.
According to Virtual_Vault_Best_Practices.pdf:
The header cache consists of data such as:
   "Folder hierarchy and specific folder properties (for example name, retention category, etc)"
   "Item specific metadata (for example recipient lists, subject, sent/received date, etc)"

From the tests I’ve done using "Instant Search" I’ve had “mixed” results.
I can view a mail in my VV, however if I search for keywords in the body (which I can see within the reading pane) I get ”No match found”
If I do an identical search using the “Search Vaults” (add-in option) works fine (unsurprisingly)

So – my results indicate that you can’t rely on use of “Windows Search” to searches for text within the message body in a scenario where you have content strategy set to “Do not store any items in cache” and you don’t have stubs present.

IMHO there are numerous valid reasons for not wanting a local content cache.
Apart from the security implications (ok I know there are “options” in this space ), other valid reasons for not wanting to have a content cache include stateless VDI, Remote Desktop Services (aka TS) and XenApp

Questions
- Am I right in thinking that when not using shortcuts and with “Content Strategy” set to “Do not store any items in cache”, it won’t be possible to do a reliable keywoard search for body content using Windows Search ?
- Is there any way around this / is this likely to change in future (e.g. will it be possible for Windows Search to somehow make use of a server-side index of content?)

Thanks

-AL

[JesusWept3 · Accepted solution]

well it can't index what isn't there, thats what the Search.asp, Searcho2k.asp and ArchiveExplorer searches are all for when searching on the server side.

The reason that Instant Search and WDS becomes a viable option when using Vault Cache is due to the fact that the data is local, and even when you *do* have shortcuts, you would only be able to search for that portion of the mail that exists within the message body, you wouldn't be able to search the attachments.

Older versions of WDS integration had a button to allow you to online archives (ones that weren't cached) but that got removed some time ago for various reasons, i think your best bet may actually be X1, but thats a bit more of an extensive solution really

http://www.x1.com/products/x1-for-symantec-enterprise-vault

But yeah basically what it comes down to, IS/WDS will only index whats there on the local machine
If its not there, it can't index it

[AL_G]

Thanks for the reply. This confirms what I thought, but it's actually quite "dissapoinitng" to have this confirmed.

I wonder how many people really appreciate the significance of this.

It would be great if Windows Search could somehow "hook in" to the Vault back-end.

Windows 7 Search does support "federation" so in "theory" this ought to be possible
e.g.

Federating Windows Search with Enterprise Data Sources
Federated Search in Windows

I wonder if Symantec have "considered" this as an approach or have this as a possible roadmap item?

-AL

[JesusWept3]

I believe its definitely on the road map to make as much improvement as they can
To be honest though, i don't know of many companies that will use a contentless VC/VV, for me it kind of defeats the purpose and is a slightly nicer version of AE.... but that's just my opinion

[AL_G]

re: "well it can't index what isn't there"
> that depends on HOW the indexing is being done
If it hooks in to the back-end, in "theory" (at least) that ought to be possible

e.g.

Federating Windows Search with Enterprise Data Sources
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/e7/archive/2009/03/23/federating-windows-search-with-enterprise-data-sources...

Federated Search in Windows
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/dd940456(v=vs.85).aspx

[Rob_Wilcox1]

It's in the future... but not yet.

EV with WDS and the Outlook Client don't leverage Windows Federated Searching.