Consolidation of Enterprise Vault File Archiving servers

[FischerP]

Hi All,

Has anyone successfully consolidated Enterprise Vault file archiving servers? I have an environment with 3 EV servers (EV1 MBX, EV2 & EV3 FSA).

My plan to perform this consolidation is to merge EV3 with EV2. There are 2 options I am considering:

Option 1 - Migration of Indexes, Vault Store and Vault Store Partition

1. Migrate Vault Store using Tech note Article - http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH47388 and any necessary partitions relocated from EV2 to EV1.

2. Migrate Enterprise Vault Indexes using tech note article - http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH51450

3. Delete old file archiving task on EV3 and recreate new tasks on EV2.

4. Delete EV services from EV3

5. Delete EV3 from Site

6. Point DNS alias for EV3 to EV2 for FSA Placeholders

7 Remove EV3 from AD.

However, I can't find anything in regards to the updating of Placeholder shortcuts in the event of this type of consolidation. Do I need to run FSA Utility to Re-create placeholder shortcuts?

Option 2 - Use Enterprise Vault Building Block fail over

1. Present storage for Indexes and Vault Store partitions of EV3 to EV2

2. Point DNS alias for EV3 to EV2 for FSA Placeholders

3. Execute USL

4. Remove EV3 from AD.

Easier method of consolidating, but does keep EV3 as part of the Enterprise Vault site.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks and Regards,

[AndrewB]

what's driving this effort?

[FischerP]

The driver is to reduce the EV infrastructure and administrative overheard by server consolidation. It is easy with email archiving as we can move archives from one EV server to another using 'Move Archive' or third party tools.

I have an up coming project where a customer has an EV environment of 8 servers (4 of these are file archiving). They never fully rolled out FSA and have stopped due to constant internal changes. They have asked if there is a way to consolidate their 4 FSA EV servers down to 2 without impacting the users accessing Placeholder shortcuts.