Deleting an Enterprise Vault Archive

[vjose79]

I would like to know the correct steps that need to be taken to delete an Exchange Archive using the Enterprise Vault Admin console

EV Server version 9.0.2

Retention policy: Applied and locked
Site Properties allow users to delete items from archive
 

[AndrewB · Accepted solution]

all you have to do is right click on the archive and delete :)

[vjose79]

Is it necessary to unlock the retention category or change retention category before deleting the archive?

There is one archive that was deleted using the properties menu but it is not getting removed from EV and remains in the deleting.... status

[AndrewB]

you might have to unlock it to change the settings so what you'll want to look for is "prevent deletion of archived items in the category." also, if the user is on legal hold or part of a search in DA it could also interfere with the deletion

[Simon_B_]

Retention Categories are ignored when deleting the whole archive. There are however a few things that can prevent/delay archive deletion:

First of all: EV does only run the archive deletion if it has free processing capacity, so depending on your schedules etc. it might not start deleting items right away. There was a TN on this but somehow I cant find it atm. Furthermore if you are using discovery accelerator it could be that items in this archive are still on hold by DA, this also will prevent deletion.

The best thing to find out whats going on is to make sure that EV is not in backup mode and restart the storage service. Pay attention to the eventlog during the next few minutes, there will be entries of "storage delete" indicating whether deletion has started or problems did occur 

/edit: forgot to mention: if you are archiving to worm storage (centera in compliance mode, netapp snaplock etc) it is also possible that archives get stuck in "marked for deletion" state

[AndrewB]

hmm that's strange, i responded but it doesn't show up

[JesusWept3]

Retention categories are NOT ignored when you delete, if you have prevent deletion then your archive will not be deleted, you will get an event with the users name, the retention category that is stopping the delete and how many items are in that ret cat stopping the deletion

[AndrewB]

yea that's what i wrote in my post. why isnt it showing up?

[JesusWept3]

it got marked as spam, sorry

[AndrewB]

ok, anyway, listen to JW. he knows his stuff. what i was trying to tell you before is that yes you might have to unlock the retention category IF the setting for "prevent deletion of archived items in tis category" is checked. that will stop the archive from being deleted and so would legal holds in Discovery Accelerator.

[vjose79]

Thanks for the info. I will try again after unlocking retention group and 'Prevent deletion of items archived in this category' is not selected. Also will check event log after restarting Storage service to see if any errors related to the particulat archive that is currently in deleting stage

[JesusWept3]

whilst doing that, i would suggest checking the prevent users from deleting , so that no one can delete items whilst waiting for that archive to be deleted,