EV8 - Delete placeholders leaving archives untouched in vault store

[SiTVG]

Am using EV8 Sp5 FSA on Windows Server 2003

We have about 1.5M placeholders on a Windows 2003 File Server archiving to a Windows 2008 storage server. Browsing and backups of the File server have become sluggish I suspect due to the large volume of very small (stub) files in hundreds of shared folders. Archives currently set to remain on stub deletion 

Many of these stub files need to be kept for compliance reasons but do not need to be visible/accessible to users. Therefore my plan was to remove stub files over a certain age whilst leaving archives in place in the Vault Store. Have looked through various forums and suprised this question does not seem to have been asked before.

Any ideas anyone how I might do this? (or perhaps why I should not!). I can manually delete the stubs of course (leaving archives) but am looking for an automated method

[James_Slack]

I personally do not use File archiving, but I assume it works in the same way as Exchange.

You need to set up policies to get the stubs automatically deleting after a set age.

In Exchange we vault after 90 days, delete stubs after a year and keep archived data for ever.

In the Vault Admin Console, under Policies, I have a default exchange policy (there is a section fro File below Exchange) - the options are self explantitory. Shortcut Deletion is what you are looking for.

Hope this helps

Cheers - James

[SiTVG]

You are quite right that there is an option to delete stubs and leave archives in Exchange policies but not FSA.

There are options to delete archive file when placeholder is deleted but not delete placeholder and leave archive intact 

[James_Slack]

But surely if you don't have "Delete archived file when placeholder is deleted" checked, it will leave the file where it is in the archive and just remove the tag.

I would test this as it sounds like it should work. Obviously test on a file you can delete (a test one) and ensure the individual folder policy doesnt conflict with the default one etc.

[SiTVG]

I do leave the "Delete archived file when placeholder is deleted" unchecked but there is no option to auto remove stubs after x,y.. etc If you take a look at the options yourself you will see what I mean

[James_Slack]

Ah OK, gotcha. I had misread the general tab and assumed the default 90 was 90 days - in fact that is nothing to do with stub deletion at all.

Out of a question, what are the stub files? are they the same file name and extension as the original files?

I have a VBS that I use to delete files over a certain age with a particular extension. If there really is nothing in Vault (surely there must be?!!)  then I can give you that if it will help.

James

[SiTVG]

I am as suprised as you James. I thought there must be something but it appears not. I guess some vbs or SQL script might be able to do the trick. Problem is that the stub files are the same name and file extension. Only difference is the file attribute "PLO" which I assume means placeholder 

[James_Slack]

Crikey, that would make things harder and means my script wont help here.

I am shocked to see no one else has jumped in and pointed out how we are missing something really obvious!