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EV for Exchange - Sizes of Archives

warnox
Level 3

Hi,

I'm seeing some strange sizes in EV archives so thought I'd get other peoples opinoins on this. This solution was deployed recently and everything seemed fine (testing with IT users, as we all do). Moved onto the next department and here is what I was seeing.

User 1

Mailbox size in Exchange: 18.8GB

Post EV size in Exchange: 4.2GB

EV Archive Size: 46.7GB

So the archive, which should have a maximum size of 14.6GB increased by over 300%. Obviously I just thought the reporting was wrong so I logged this with Symantec. They ran a query in SQL and showed me that indeed the largest email in this archive was 250MB, with the list of ridiculously large emails going into the thousands. Hence the report was correct.

We then exported the largest email from the archive and the MSG file itself, with all the attachments, was actually only 13MB. The rest of the 'data' was made up of .DVSCC files.

Following this, we changed a registry setting to make EV convert Excel and Word files to TXT, rather than HTML. Another user was then archived, with the following results.

User 2

Mailbox size in Exchange: 10.2GB

Post EV size in Exchange: 2.3GB

EV Archive Size: 12.5GB

Better, we're now down to a 150% increase.

This is the current situation. For me this doesn't make sense, as I would expect an archiving solution to save on space, rather than triple it :) I guess my questions are.

1. Is what I'm seeing here normal?

2. What sizes are you seeing for archives in production?

The case is still open with Symantec and they're finding out if there is a way and to "clean up" users who have already been archived, reducing their archive size. I haven't yet told them about 'User 2'.

Environment

  • EV 11.0.1 (upgraded from 10.0.2 > 11.0 > 11.0.1), all users have only been archived since 11.0.1 has been installed.
  • Server 2008 R2
  • Exchange 2010

Appreciate any help.

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Accepted Solutions

Rob_Wilcox1
Level 6
Partner

Okay.

 

FWIW I have a similar problem presented to me when I was at Symantec, relating to archiving of public folder content, and it was more in the archive than in Exchange.  But it's all out of context.  EV *wins* when the same content is archived multiple times, as is usually the case, I mean a single email is likely to end up being archived by the sender, and the recipient...  so in Exchange that = 2x storage, in EV it's 1x.

Working for cloudficient.com

View solution in original post

7 REPLIES 7

Rob_Wilcox1
Level 6
Partner
A couple of thoughts. 1/ This bit doesn't make sense. So the archive, which should have a maximum size of 14.6GB increased by over 300%. Obviously I just thought the reporting was wrong so I logged this with Symantec. They ran a query in SQL and showed me that indeed the largest email in this archive was 250MB, with the list of ridiculously large emails going into the thousands. Hence the report was correct. We then exported the largest email from the archive and the MSG file itself, with all the attachments, was actually only 13MB. The rest of the 'data' was made up of .DVSCC files. What is the SQL query that was run? If it showed the EV Item Size was 250 Mb and/or the original size was 250 Mb, then the size of the item on disk should be 250 Mb after is exported. How was the export done? 2/ You're taking things in isolation If we are on the same Exchange 2010 server, and I send you a 10 Mb PowerPoint file... In Exchange my mailbox will be 10 Mb (give or take) because of the Sent Item. Your mailbox will be 10 Mb (give or take) because of the item in your Inbox. In EV *give or take* if we're both archived and that item is eligble, and archived.. we'll only have *1* of those 10 Mb messages. EV has Single Instance Storage. Actually Optimised Single Instance Storage. Depending on whether sharing is configured on the vault store or not, or the vault store group or not, that 10 Mb message sent to 50 people will *still* only take 10 Mb of space in EV, but now, 500 Mb in Exchange. Hope that helps
Working for cloudficient.com

AndrewB
Moderator
Moderator
Partner    VIP    Accredited

what file type(s) are those 250MB attachments?

warnox
Level 3

Rob,

The below is all done with a test email but it illustrates the problem. This email was about 1.3MB in Exchange and contains 10 Excel documents, and no Word (DOC) files at all. In EV it came out as 17MB.

1. I'm not sure what the SQL query was to list all the items in an archive but to list one item

select * from saveset where IdTransaction = '7086918C-F33C-D046-1A1D-D57CF00D6111'

To then export the item we used 'evsrv' and the command

ds 1A53F7DAF01D60941A0393FA430C23C8B1110000VAULT1 7086918CF33CD0461A1DD57CF00D6111 -o c:\ds2

I attached the screenshots of the DS2 folder and the contents of Recombined and Parts. In the Recombined folder you can see the original email (an MSG file) which is 1.3MB indeed. But the folder also contains another random 17MB file.

Note that this was done before we changed the registry to convert XLS files to TXT instead of HTML. After the change the same file came out as 5.5MB, rather than 17 (see DS3 attachment).

Andrew,

The actual email only contains one 12MB Excel file, but EV turned this into 250MB of DVSCC files through some conversion process.

Attached a 7z file as the site crashed when trying to do multiple JPG's.

Rob_Wilcox1
Level 6
Partner

warnox, there appears to be something wrong with the conversion of some of the attachments, which is why you're seeing LARGE files.  However, the description I gave still holds.

 

Working for cloudficient.com

warnox
Level 3

I guess it's back to Symantec support for now :)

Thanks for your help, I will post the final solution when we have one.

Rob_Wilcox1
Level 6
Partner

Okay.

 

FWIW I have a similar problem presented to me when I was at Symantec, relating to archiving of public folder content, and it was more in the archive than in Exchange.  But it's all out of context.  EV *wins* when the same content is archived multiple times, as is usually the case, I mean a single email is likely to end up being archived by the sender, and the recipient...  so in Exchange that = 2x storage, in EV it's 1x.

Working for cloudficient.com

Rob_Wilcox1
Level 6
Partner
Do you have any updates on this?
Working for cloudficient.com