File System Archiving - Roll back methods and FSAUtility

[Chris_Hall1]

I have a medium to large organisation with around 50TB of unstructured data. They have implemented FSA v8SP2 with a view to archive around 70% of this data to an EMC Centera based on a Not Modified for 6 months policy targeting Office and Media files

The Archive Target file servers are DAS and SAN with volumes between 250GB to 600GB and supporting around 4000 Windows Shares

There have been a number of occasions where the Business or IT BAU Team has requested FSA be rolled back on a sub-folder within these 4000 shares and on examination of the methods one might use to perform this we have concentrated on FSAUtility.

I have posted on this tool being a rather blunt object previously and here is some detail why:
 
I have a 300GB Windows Share (Share1) that is an Archive Target with around 74,000 files

Within this Share I have a folder (FolderA) which I would like to un-archive of 120GB and 30,000 files.

I use the command line: fsautility -t -s \\server\Share1\FolderA

This completes with the Status : Done but the XML Report reports that the File exists.

I therefore use the command line: fsautility -t -f -s \\server\Share1\FolderA

However, upon checking the contents of FolderA some of the more recent data that the Users have accessed and modified, that has the same files names, has been overwritten by older archived data

We logged a call with Symantec on this one - and received the following response:

"

Good Afternoon,

I have discussed your question

"Customer wishes to recall all FSA items without overwriting items that have already been recalled and modified and thereby losing any changes by over writing them"

with a colleague and there is no option in the product to achieve this via fsautility or any other Enterprise Vault utility.

My recommendation/suggestion still stands as the only workaround for you i.e.

1. recall all items to an alternate location

2. use a third party tool to copy over the files to the original location unless the original location is newer.

"

we were also prompted to log an enhancement request, which we will do, and we closed the call.


Does anyone on the forum have an experiences on this one or perhaps alternate methods rather than having to copy all the data out to a secondary location and then a copy back ?



Chris

[LanceChase]

We had the same issue, same results.

We ended up writing a script to retrieve the messages back to the original location and then copying them from there.

It would be nice to have them enhance the tool.

[Chris_Hall1]

Thanks for the feedback Lance - I launched an Idea with the suggestion in it here: https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/idea/fsautility-change-request



Chris

[John_Chisari]

Hi Chris

There has been a powershell script developed internally by one of the support guys, which we use for customer with bad placeholders, which will probably do what you are looking for.  Can you re-open that case and ask the TSE to have a look at technote 326112 - they should be able to send you through powershell script and details on how to use it.

John

[Chris_Hall1]

Hi John,

Thanks for comming back to me

Shortly after we closed the call the TSE sent the powershell script over and we tested and found it did offer a way forward but was unsupported

Personally I'd prefer to use a supported and slightly modified fsautility for this task but I appreciate the TSE's efforts on this one


Chris