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EV80SP2 - Scheduled Archiving and backup

GertjanA
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Hello all,


Trying to get my head around this again...

Backups of the vaultservers (index, cache, shopping, stores and system state etc) are being made in between 06:00 and 18:00
The siteschedule allows scheduled archving from 21:00 to 05:00
SQL is backed up nightly.
We're using the powershell scripts to set a specific EV-server in backup mode. Backup mode is taken away when the backup job finishes succesfully. (we use triggerfiles. Those are written only when backup is succesfull)

I know that on server EV1, backup starts at 06:30, and finishes around 10:00

Could I set the mailboxarchiving tasks on that server to run from 12:00 to 05:00?

As that server is than not in backupmode, it should archive (right?)
As soon as a backup starts, archiving would have stopped for an hour, allowing time to finish whatever needs to be done.
When backup is finished, I leave another 2 hours to be sure, then start archiving again.

This effectively will increase my archiving window from 8 hours to 17 hours (right)

When I set the site-schedule to be 24 hours, I assume archiving stops if the system goes in backupmode. (read-only). Does it need time to finish of processing items before actually entering backup mode?
Seeing the amount of mailboxes, I'd like to get an archiving window as big as possible.

thanks for ideas/input/advice

Gertjan


Regards. Gertjan
1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Accepted Solutions

jajensen
Level 4
Partner

So just so I'm clear, you're saying that you want to archive from noon until 5am?

Strictly speaking, you can do this, yes.  From what you've specified, your backup schedule won't conflict with your archiving schedule, and you'll be in normal modes when archiving and backup modes when running backups.

The question you need to ask yourself, however, is 'Do I really need that long of an archive window?'

You need to keep in mind the following:
 1.  Archiving puts a load on the Exchange server, so it's best to do it after business hours when users aren't trying to access their mailboxes
 2.  Enterprise Vault only calculates what is eligible for archiving at the start of an archiving run.

When you're in steady state (i.e. - Initial archiving after rollout is done and the backlog taken care of), it typically only takes a few hours to archive all eligible items from the past day.  Once you've gotten past those first couple of hours, there's just no reason to keep the archiving window open.

Also keep in mind that, if you have your stores set to delete safety copies after backup, you don't want to get into a situation where users see pending items during the day.  They can't move, copy, or delete those pending items, and that sort of thing results in calls to the helpdesk.

I would recommend setting your archive schedule to something around, say, 1am to 4am daily.  Run your archiving tasks in report mode each morning and look at the reports to make sure that you're getting all of your eligible items.  If you're not, you can increase the archiving window accordingly.

Jason

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3 REPLIES 3

dfwood
Level 4
If you are using EV8 and have CheckPointing enabled (it should be by default) then EV will continue to archive data at its next scheduled run time from the point it stopped at when you put it into Backup Mode.

jajensen
Level 4
Partner

So just so I'm clear, you're saying that you want to archive from noon until 5am?

Strictly speaking, you can do this, yes.  From what you've specified, your backup schedule won't conflict with your archiving schedule, and you'll be in normal modes when archiving and backup modes when running backups.

The question you need to ask yourself, however, is 'Do I really need that long of an archive window?'

You need to keep in mind the following:
 1.  Archiving puts a load on the Exchange server, so it's best to do it after business hours when users aren't trying to access their mailboxes
 2.  Enterprise Vault only calculates what is eligible for archiving at the start of an archiving run.

When you're in steady state (i.e. - Initial archiving after rollout is done and the backlog taken care of), it typically only takes a few hours to archive all eligible items from the past day.  Once you've gotten past those first couple of hours, there's just no reason to keep the archiving window open.

Also keep in mind that, if you have your stores set to delete safety copies after backup, you don't want to get into a situation where users see pending items during the day.  They can't move, copy, or delete those pending items, and that sort of thing results in calls to the helpdesk.

I would recommend setting your archive schedule to something around, say, 1am to 4am daily.  Run your archiving tasks in report mode each morning and look at the reports to make sure that you're getting all of your eligible items.  If you're not, you can increase the archiving window accordingly.

Jason

GertjanA
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Hi Jason and dfwood,

I am aware of the drawbacks

Archiving schedule for 3 hours is in my environment WAY to short. I need the most time possible.

I'll see what I can do with shortening backups.

Thanks.
Regards. Gertjan