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Disaster Recovery Test - None Distructive test.

Woter
Level 3

Hi All,

Question

How do I stop EV processing new emails whilst letting EV complete the processing of data already in EV? Stop the journaling task?

I would expect to see the Outlook Journal Inbox on the EV server empty and MSMQ empty.

 

Background

We have our annual DR test coming up and Enterprise Vault for Exchange is in the mix. Our environment consists of one EV server that is on an EMC RecoverPoint (RP) LUN. RecoverPoint essentially replicates the VM at SAN (block) level. between two data centers. There is about a 10 second delay.

The DR test will involve shutting down the live EV server and bringing up the RecoverPoint VM in the alternative data center.

We have journaling and archiving running. The way I understand it, EV will always be processing the journal mailbox, therefore there is always data on the EV server, so if we do a "hard" shutdown, when we restore the RP VM, we risk loosing data that EV has not committed to the WORM drive or database because of the RP 10 second lag.

I know it's not a true test, but we have agreed to do a "soft shutdown" of EV. That is, stop EV from processing data and drain the queues before shutting down the server.

Many thanks


W.

1 REPLY 1

GertjanA
Moderator
Moderator
Partner    VIP    Accredited Certified

Hello W.

Probably the best option is to place the archiving tasks into Report mode. That is a check box in the tasks themselves. When set, restart the taskcontroller service.

The items that are then in the MSMQ's will be processed, and will empty out.

Having the tasks in report mode will basically not archive things anymore.

What you can also do is set Enterprise Vault into backup mode (assuming you have EV8/9 or 10) both indexes and stores).

In theory (...) if you dismount the current storage (indexes and storage?) EV will 'see' that. Items will remain in MSMQ (storage mainly) and from the Journal Mailbox, you will see items go into Pending Archive state, but they will only be removed if the items are succesfully stored. I'd go for Reportmode, and when the MSMQ's are empty stop the EVservices. enmount/mount existing/dr storage, start services again.

Regards. Gertjan