EV for Exchange - Emails archived are younger than the age specified

[GauravAditya]

Scenario: -
EV 8.0 SP1 for Exchange in cluster (MSCS)
Platform - Windows 2008 SP1 64bit
Archiving Strategy as below: -

Mailbox Policy

a. Archiving Rules: -
  Based on Age and Quota
  Archive items when they are older than 1 Year
  Archive items until mailbox available storage reaches   35%
NO OVERRIDE SETTINGS CONFIGURED

b. Archiving Actions: -
  Delete Original Items after Archiving
  Create Shortcut for archived item after archiving
  Archive Unread items
NO LOCK APPLIED
FORCE USERS.... DISABLED

c. Shortcut Content: – (Customized Shortcut content)
  Include Banner
  Include link to archived item
  Message characters to include – 200
  Display attachment as – Links
  When shortcut is opened – Show contents

c. Shortcut Deletion: – ( 1 Year)

d. Moved Items: -
Update archive location for items moved in the mailbox

Desktop Policy

a. Options
  Toolbar buttons available to users
  Store in Vault
  Search Vault
  Delete from Vault
  Shortcut deletion – 1 Year

b.  Add all Enterprise Vault servers to intranet zone
  Show 'Browser Search' link in Integrated Search

c. Vault cache
  Make Vault Cache available for users
  Limit size of Vault Cache – (2GB)
  Features – (NOT available to the users)

d. Advanced
Deploy forms locally - Always

Along with the above information, these Mailboxes enabled for archiving do not have Quota limitation on them (i.e. unlimited quota)



Issue: -

1.       Archiving happened for all messages even that for messages less than 1 year old.

2.       None of the shortcuts appeared in the tool bar

3.       The archived messages icon appear as closed envelope and not as vault icon

4.       The message body and attachment are not fully appearing, missing text, format is showing.

5.       Retrieving messages from the archive is too slow about 5 minutes for a 263 KB attachment opening.

6.       Some large messages timeout before retrieving.

7.       Mailbox normal operation on archived messages are very slow or timeouts.

Please advise and let know if need anymore information on this.

GauravAditya

 

[GauravAditya]

Which all server names must be added to the Intranet Zone (Desktop Policy | Advanced) ?

I have added the following servers: -
Node1; Node2; Node1 (FQDN); Node2 (FQDN); EVClusterName; EVSiteName

Please help.

Regards,

GauravAditya

[MichelZ]

GauravAditya

Please don't take this offensive, but you ask rather basic questions lately.
I highly advise you getting some training for Enterprise Vault.


To your questions:

1.       Archiving happened for all messages even that for messages less than 1 year old.
           -> Yes, because of your Quota based settings, and "no override". You should set "Never archive items younger than: " to 1 Year (but then, quota based archiving is pointless)

2.       None of the shortcuts appeared in the tool bar
           -> As you have set the Forms deploy to "always", I suspect you have not installed the Client?

3.       The archived messages icon appear as closed envelope and not as vault icon
           -> As you have set the Forms deploy to "always", I suspect you have not installed the Client?

4.       The message body and attachment are not fully appearing, missing text, format is showing.
           -> This is because you have set your "Message characters to include" to 200 Characters. Set the "Content of shortcut body" to "Use message body"

5.       Retrieving messages from the archive is too slow about 5 minutes for a 263 KB attachment opening.
           -> Weird. What storage do you have?

6.       Some large messages timeout before retrieving.
           -> Again, Weird. Storage?

7.       Mailbox normal operation on archived messages are very slow or timeouts.
           -> Again. Weird. Storage? Server specs?


Cheers

[MichelZ]

Yes, every name/ip you can think of which *could* be used for EV Access.

This means for ALL EV Servers, the following:

(Physical)
NetBios Name
DNS Name
DNS Alias
IP
(Cluster)
Cluster Netbios Name
Cluster DNS Name
Cluster DNS Alias
Cluster IP

as well as the EV Site Alias if you have that.

You should be on the safe side, then :)

[GauravAditya]

Firstly, I agree that my questions might be basic but it only because I have not encountered these issues anywhere and i am still learning on troubleshooting skills... I will try and improvise on that with all your support i guess... :)

Moreover, we set-up a test environment and it seems to be configured with the exact same settings and no such issues like these.

Please find the response in BOLD:

1.       Archiving happened for all messages even that for messages less than 1 year old.
           -> Yes, because of your Quota based settings, and "no override". You should set "Never archive items younger than: " to 1 Year (but then, quota based archiving is pointless)

~ We dont want to set the override setting as then "By Quota" setting will not take affect and archiving will not happen.

 

2.       None of the shortcuts appeared in the tool bar
           -> As you have set the Forms deploy to "always", I suspect you have not installed the Client?

~ EV_Outlook Add-in is installed on the clients. Not missed that at all...

3.       The archived messages icon appear as closed envelope and not as vault icon
           -> As you have set the Forms deploy to "always", I suspect you have not installed the Client?

~ EV_Outlook Add-in is installed on the clients. Not missed that all...

4.       The message body and attachment are not fully appearing, missing text, format is showing.
           -> This is because you have set your "Message characters to include" to 200 Characters. Set the "Content of shortcut body" to "Use message body"

~ We need to save space and storage is our real concern... That is why we have done these settings. I am sorry if I was not clear on this. The issue is when we double-click on the archived message, it still opens the customized message and does not retrieves the original message.
 

5.       Retrieving messages from the archive is too slow about 5 minutes for a 263 KB attachment opening.
           -> Weird. What storage do you have?

~ Issue resolved

6.       Some large messages timeout before retrieving.
           -> Again, Weird. Storage?

~ Issue resolved

7.       Mailbox normal operation on archived messages are very slow or timeouts.
           -> Again. Weird. Storage? Server specs?

~ Issue resolved

As far as I recall, in EV 8.0 we do not need to deploy any forms on the exchange server. Does that mean we do not need to do anything on the Exchange Mailbox server unlike to the earlier versions of EV ?

[MichelZ]

well, ev does not archive more tham it should. thats the weird thing when you say that almost everything gets archived. can you say what quota limits you have set on the mailbox? it is all related to the client/ forms not working on the client. what client version have you installed? is the addon loaded? (you can see that somewhere in outlook) as for the issues already resolved, can you describe what you did to resolve it? yes, you do not need to deploy the forms on exchange anymore.

[GauravAditya]

As i mentioned in the first post that the mailboxes enabled for archiving do NOT have mailbox quota (set to grow Unlimited)...

Outlook Add-ins version is the same that gets downloaded with EV 8.0 SP1 package... The add-on is installed but as in the above post, the icons are not visible.

Scenario: -
Outlook Add-in installed and desktop rebooted...
Outlook Configuration is : -
Cached mode enabled
Synchronize forms enabled...

Please advise.....

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To resovle the storage related issues, we found out that the vaultadmin did not have permissions to create files in the clustered drives that are being pointed as for Vault Store, Indexing, MSMQ and PST Holding.... the strange thing is that this user is a local administrators group on EV nodes and local server administrators has Full control on the drives, but we still had to give explicit rights to the user.. Then we reconfigured the Service account in VAC and restarted the services, performed failover to another drive and it seems to be working fine now...

[GauravAditya]

Hello All,

Just found out this technote that clearly applies to point 2,3 and 4 in the list of issues mention in the first post.

Now the icons are available, vault shortcuts are also visible and emails/shortcuts when opened with a double click retrieves the message from the vault store.

Now the only issue left out is why emails younger than 1 year got archived ?

Mailbox Archiving Rules: -
  Based on Age and Quota
  Archive items when they are older than 1 Year
  Archive items until mailbox available storage reaches   35%
NO OVERRIDE SETTINGS CONFIGURED

AGAIN, Users targetted do not have quota limitations

Please help...

[GauravAditya]

I am sorry for this post but i missed out on the TN I was talking about that resolved the rest of the issues: -
http://seer.entsupport.symantec.com/docs/285927.htm


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Now the only issue left out is why emails younger than 1 year got archived ?

Mailbox Archiving Rules: -
  Based on Age and Quota
  Archive items when they are older than 1 Year
  Archive items until mailbox available storage reaches   35%
NO OVERRIDE SETTINGS CONFIGURED

AGAIN, Users targetted do not have quota limitations

Please help...

[TonySterling]

If you have quota enabled it is going to archive the mailbox no matter what the age of items unless you use the Never Younger than setting. (as MichelZ has already explained.)

You say you do not have quota limits, what do you have set for the warning?

If you do not want anything younger than a year archived you should just use Age Based archiving.

[PJuster]

I would agreed with the previous post, if you wish for items to not be archived younger than 1 year, then set "Never archive items younger than: " to 1 Year.

Never archive items younger than <age>. This setting gives an absolute limit on the age of items that are archived.

For example, if you set this to 2 months, the Exchange Mailbox Tasks never archive anything that has been modified in the last two months, regardless of any other settings you choose.

If you users do not have Exchange quota's then this would seem pointless as 35% is never reached.

[GauravAditya]

Hello All,

Please check this out now...

Using "Age and Quota" based archiving causes all items to be archived when no Exchange Quotas are in place
http://seer.entsupport.symantec.com/docs/324320.htm

There is a hotfix for this and i just found that out... My head's really bursting now out of this...

Why could i not find this out since morning? anyways, i will be trying this and lets see if this helps resolve the issue.

[MichelZ]

Yes, this is/was a very unfortunate bug... :(

It should resolve the issue why you are seeing everything getting archived.

Cheers

[Michael_Bilsbor]

Hi,

I am very sorry you encountered this bug.  This bug was an example of what i talked about in the forum of trying to improve ways of communicating with our customers.  At present we only send out emails for a tech alert (ie data loss or potential data loss) so 'pretty bad' issues like this you don't get told about which is frustrating for everyone.  the question is what is the best way of communicating such information?

Mike
EV Engineering

[GauravAditya]

No so good luck for me with this issue...

I followed the steps provided in the "Hotfix Details.txt"

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Files to be replaced
==============

ExchangeSynch.dll
ArchServer.dll 
AgentClientBroker.exe
AgentMSMQProxyDLL.dll
ExchangeItemsU.dll
MigratorServer.exe
EVESReporter.exe
XMLDataStream.dll
EVPM.exe

Installation Instructions
==========================

1. Take backup of all files before replacing them.

2. Stop the Exchange Mailbox Archiving Task on the EV server

3. Replace the modified files on the EV server ( Loaction - <EV_INSTALL>\ :(
  
4. Start the Exchange Mailbox Archiving Task on the EV server

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Steps followed: -
1. Stopped the tasks
2. Stopped the Admin Service
3. Backed up the files that were to be replaced
4. Replaced the files with the ones provided in the TN (File provided were renamed appropriately)
5. Started all the services back again

Please help...

[GauravAditya]

Additional Steps performed
1. Restored 2 mailboxes enabled for archiving using the "Export" feature which ran successfully.
2. Deleted archive for one of the user
3. Enabled mailbox for that deleted user again
4. Restarted and ran the archiving task again

Result: -
1. For the user whose archives were deleted, nothing is archived
2. For the other user, everything is archived.

I guess I am in a middle of nowhere right now... not getting a clue of what is happening...