Hi Maxie,
Can you not update the existing ev (in the old forest) to 9, then do a DR to the new forest?
I'm not sure this is possible, verify with support. I've only done dr's within the same site.
The different targets being archived are not related to each other (sort of, read on). You can remove mailbox-archiving, and keep FSA/SharePoint archiving running.
In your case, when running 8 in the old site, you might have sharing enabled between all archiving targets. Even when removing mailbox-archives/archiving, this will not break FSA/SP. Because you use pst-export/import and/or move archive, ev will make sure shared items remain on disk, even if the original (the one being referenced) sits in a mailarchive. (example: worddocument is being stored on a fileserver, sp and in a mailbox, the mailbox doc is archived as an item, fsa and sp have a reference to it, the item will remain in the mailboxarchivelocation).
This does imply that if you have this, and you have moved all mailbox archives, it might be that you still have data in the mailarchvies necessary for EV to be able to restore items if needed. This means you cannot 'simply' delete or reformat the drives that house the mail-archives.
If you have seperate VSG's for mail, fsa and sp, your ok.
As for 'move archive': if you need to move more than (let's say) 200 archives, you are probably better off hiring someone temporarily to export/import pst's. Move archive is slow, because of the error-checking, and can fail relatively quick on corrupt messages etc. If you have a lot of (big) archives to move, you could look at Archive Shuttle from Glasshouse, or TransVault.
But, to answer your question, it is safe to move mailarchiving to a new site, without breaking FSA and SP.
Good luck, and let us know what you decide
Regards. Gertjan
