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Enterprive Vault - Potential impact of sharing Closed Partitions as Read Only

CracUnBourrePif
Level 3

Hello,

We are in the process of Moving our Closed Partitions to a new storage.
We attempted the opeation last weekend, and we had to stop EV services for the entire 60 hours or so, therefore with a visible impact on our users.

Bad news : only 2 partitions out of 9 could be copied over during that time, and the copy of the 7 remaining still hasn't finished after 5 days.
We are looking for a way of moving those 7 partitions with the least impact on operations, i.e. without stopping EV services every weekend for the next 2 months.

We thought of setting Share permissions on the current closed partitions as ReadOnly ? Then copy the files over to the new storage for as long as it takes.
Then when the copy is over, take EV down, switch the PartitionPath and restart.
QUESTION: what would be the potential impact for EV during the time that the Closed PArtitions is in R/O ?

I found this in a Technote:
Enterprise Vault modifies a closed partition for the following reasons:
• Deletion. Enterprise Vault modifies the partition if users delete items from their archives.
 --> We don't care
• Storage Expiry. Enterprise Vault deletes items from archives when their Retention Periods expire.
 --> We don't care
• Pending Items. Items that are in a pending state before the partition is closed result in writes to the closed partition.
 --> We don't care
• Collections. The Enterprise Vault Collector continues to run on a closed partition.
Collections are required on closed partitions because the collection process removes the temporary files that are created when users view archived items.
 --> PROBLEM : if those temp files cannot be created, I suspect we won't be able to access our archives..

Any advice/information about this issue is very welcome !
Many thanks to all in advance.

 

6 REPLIES 6

Arjun_Shelke
Level 6
Employee Accredited

Answer to your QUESTION: what would be the potential impact for EV during the time that the Closed PArtitions is in R/O ?

Ans: When you place closed parition in backup mode (or read only mode), all write operations will be restricted to that partition. Write operations include, Delete, Restore and Archive (But on closed partition archiving is not the concern).

So users wont be able to delete archived items, restore archived items. But the retrieval of archived items through shortcuts, search and archive explorer is possible.

About collection, when user retrieves saveset (archived item) which was collected in cab file, collection will extract the saveset to its original location for retrieval to work. Those files are ARCHDVS files, and temp files, once sparse collection runs, it will remove these files.

No need to worry about those temp files, as retrieval works in backup mode, hence it should be able to create them on that partition.

GertjanA
Moderator
Moderator
Partner    VIP    Accredited Certified

Hello

As addition to Advisor's remark on the last part:

About collection, when user retrieves saveset (archived item) which was collected in cab file, collection will extract the saveset to its original location for retrieval to work. Those files are ARCHDVS files, and temp files, once sparse collection runs, it will remove these files.

No need to worry about those temp files, as retrieval works in backup mode, hence it should be able to create them on that partition.

 

If you have that partition set as 'read-only' those tempfiles cannot be created, and therefor items cannot be retrieved.

You don't mention on how you copy, I assume you use some sort of tool (robocopy?) to perform this action. You could configure the copy process to only copy 'static' data.

First, set the 'age of items to be collected' on the closed partitions to 'older than 999 years'. This will prevent creation of new cab-files. Configure the copy tool to copy *.cab, *.dvs, *.dvscc and *.dvssp (or *.dvs??) Copy everything over. If necessary, then stop EV-services, run an incremental copy. when succesfull, reconfigure storagelocations, and then start services, verifu functionality. When necessary, re-enable collections again.

Out of interest, what tool do you use to copy, how much data needs to be copied, any idea why it is slow?

 

Regards. Gertjan

JesusWept3
Level 6
Partner Accredited Certified
Surely it'd be easier with less EV doente to restore from backup?
https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-allen-turl-07370146

GabeV
Level 6
Employee Accredited

You shouldn't have any issues if you share the partitions in R/O mode. Actually, EV creates a hidden share for each partition for admin purposes (only VSA has full access). As you mentioned, storage expiry and "users allow to delete emails" could be an issue. If you are using one of those two features (or both), just disable them until all the data is copied over to the new storage. That will assure that you won't have any inconsistencies between the storage and the EV databases. If you are using collections, you could increase the collections age to 999 or modify the schedule where the "Start at" and the "End at" values are the same.

I hope this helps.

Ben_Watts
Level 6
Employee Accredited

Completely agree with JesusWept here, restore from Backup surely is the best way to go.

No break in EV for end users then you simply have to copy over the last few days of data that wasnt included in your backups.

 

GabeV
Level 6
Employee Accredited

Do you have any updates on this thread? Do you need more assistance regarding this topic? If not, please mark the post that best solves your problem as the answer to this thread.