Enterprise Vault - Can I merge/combine archives

[BernardW]

Hello All,

We just installed Enterprise Vault 9.0.2 last week so I am still trying to get my berrings and figure out how things work.

As a result I am wondering is it possible to merge or combine two File System Archives together?

Here is the situation:

We have been moving a LOT of files from our main file server to a secondary location due to space constraints. One of the directories we moved was an "Admin Drive." Now there is still an active Admin Drive that will be archived in the future. What we are trying to figure out is if we archive the moved/old Admin Drive will we be able to combine it with the active Admin Drive when stuff gets archived there in the future?

Man it is a lot of work getting things into a consistant state after things have been taped together for so long.

Bernard

[Simon_Altit_-_I · Accepted solution]

Instead of worrying about whether or not you can merge the archives later, why don't you take this opportunity to consolidate your main file server with the data you have moved off to the secondary location. By this i mean configure archiving on your main file server and once you have recovered a sufficient amount of space move back all the data you have migrated off, that way you will have a consistant structure and a single point of contact for your end users?

[BernardW]

I agree that would be the best way to do it. I just am not too sure if I will have enough room to do it. The other part that I am not sure about doing it that way is will the files have an old enough "last modified date" to be archived while the good/current stuff is not archived.

The reason I am wondering this is that I just windows moved the files from the primary storage to a secondary storage. - Just looked at a few of the files and I guess they did maintain the modified date so that may be the best method of doing it.

In any case I guess the question does still stand - more for my own knowledge - is it possible to merge Archives?

[Simon_Altit_-_I]

If your implementing archiving on your primary server and you still dont think you will have enough space to move the data back then maybe your archiving policies are not aggressive enough?

You can use the FSA Analayser tool to work out if the files will be elligable for archiving and then you can run the FSA archiving task in report mode to confirm your findings.

It is possible to merge archives however it isnt recommended, if you want to know the process to follow open the the documentation on your evserver in the administration guides folder called utilities.pdf and go to section titled FSAUtility

[BernardW]

Well it looks like we will try to move all the items back to the original/main storage location and then archive from there.

I think our policy will be aggressive enough - the problem is that we have been manually removing everything older then 1 year. So there is not much room to move on the main storage lcoation with 10+ years of data. At the same tiem it looks like the PST archiving may free up enough room to give it a go.

A follow up question would be how do people deal with a server upgrade/migration with the file system archiving? so currently all our active data is on server1 (win 2003) and I would like to move it to a new server (Win 2k8r2). How would this migration work with the archived data?

[Simon_Altit_-_I]

http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=DOC2851

This is the utilities document that describes how to use all the EV9 utilities. Go to section 17. FSA Utility and read the Migrating Placholders section. It explains how to move the shortcuts(placeholders) when you move your filesystem to another server.

[BernardW]

Thank you Simon,

that is really neet to know that you can migrate the placeholders. I have one question after reading that section: is it better to move the placeholders or migrate them?

How I understand it is that you can migrate the placeholders and it will change where the files are pointed to. And if you move the files it will actually move the files in the archive/vault store to be at the final location.

So in my case where I have a primary storage location and a secondary storage location (where I have manually moved/archived the files) I should be able to archive the files at the secondary location and then move them to the primary storage location or would it be better to migrate them?

After you migrate the files are you able to do a restore and it will restore to the new location? Is that how it works.

This product is starting to get WAY bigger then I thought it was. I am starting to see the Management Console is just a small part of Enterprise Vault.

[Simon_Altit_-_I]

You need to use the FSA Utility to migrate the placeholders to the new storage. You do NOT want to move the placeholders manually, otherwise you risk getting yourself into a world of hurt. You then will need to migrate the non archived files using an appropriate tool to ensure that you don't change any of the attributes of the files.

A i stated before to keep a consistant structure of your archive points you do NOT want to archive the files in the secondary location before moving them, otherwise they will be stored in a different archive point. When you use the FSA Utility to migrate placeholders it only moves the placeholder and the item remains in the archive point that it was orriginally created in.

Yes, after you have migrated the files if you where to do a restore they will restore to the new location.

Yes, EV has loads of additional functionality, the best way to maximise all the features is to read through that utilities document that i posted above.