Hidden Msg synchronization problem

[Judy_Glazier]

Environment:

Three EV Windows 2008 R2 x64 Servers, each with their own Vault Store, Indexes and Storage. on V 9.0 SP2

Several Exchange 2003 (in the old domain)  and Several Exchange 2010 Servers with six CAS servers in the new domain.  Same Exchange Organization.

To Date:

I have just migrated the three Enterprise Vault  Windows 2003 x32 servers to a new active directory domain and onto three new Windows 2008 R2 x64 servers.

The indexes have been moved to the new domain and mapped to a different drive than the old servers.  The data storage is remaining in the old domain for now.  A two way trust exists and is functioning correctly.

The customer wanted to use new Server Names and new DNS cnames for the servers in the new domain.  No problem. 

The EV servers were successfully migrated and Enterprise Vault is functioning as expected in the new domain on new hardware with EV 9.0 SP2.

Problem:

The customer is in the middle of an Exchange migration of mailboxes from their Exchange 2003 servers in the old domain to new Exchange 2010 servers in the new domain.

Since the migration to the new domain the Exchange 2003 users in the old domain are able to access their archived items via shortcuts in Outlook, they can use the EV Search functionality, the EV Archive Explorer and retrieve and delete archived items no problem.

The Exchange 2003 mailboxes that have been migrated to the Exchange 2010 servers are not being enabled for mailbox archiving on the Exchange 2010 servers and prior to my migrating the Enterprise Vault Servers to the new hardware they were able to access their archived emails using EVbuttons in their Outlook 2010 mailboxes.  (During the migration of their mailboxes to Exchange 2010 the hidden message went along with the mailbox).  As well their workstation have the EV 9.0 client installed so they had the Enterprise Vault Buttons in their Outlook client even though they are not enabled for archiving..

Unfortunately now that we have moved the EV Servers to the new domain the hidden message in their Exchange 2010 mailbox has the old vault server FQDN in it and they are unable to use the EV buttons. They can however access their archived items using a separate webpage and opening Archive Explorer pointing at one of the new servers.

There is a manual way to import the updated Exchange 2003 hidden message into their exchange 2010 mailboxes using MFCMAPI to export the "IPM.EnterpriseVault.Settings" and importing it into their Exchange 2010 mailboxes.

Has anyone used this MFCMapi method and hopefully found a way to script or automate this process as we have another 7,000 mailboxes to migrate to exchange 2010.

Enabling and synchronizing the mailboxes in Exchange 2010 is not an option as far as management is concerned.

Judy Glazier

[JesusWept3 · Accepted solution]

Why is it not an option? Typically what most companies do In this situation is synchinmigrationmode then enable and then straight away disable the mailbox That way no new archives are created, no new items are archived, they have a correct hidden message etc

[TonySterling]

Agreed with Alex.  If they absolutely don't want to do that then I guess you other option is host files, but that could be a big headache.

[Judy_Glazier]

I couldn't agree with you more JesusWept3, and thank you for a quick response. Have already made your suggestion and did not find approval. Still proposing this one and hoping they will reconsider. Unfortunately not my decision, migrations were already in place. In a perfect world everything would go as it should. Now I must try to make it work. Appreciate any input to working around this aready existing situation. Thanks Judy

[Judy_Glazier]

Hello Tony

Thanks for your response. 

Already using hostfile for the Vault Site Alias "Vault" as that cname was already being used in the new domain by another altogether different application and unfortunately that was the vault site alias for the exsting Enterprise Vault Environment.

But I don't think I could use a hostfile for cname alias for computers in a different domain.  Although it works for the vault site alias.  Your right in the long run a hostfile could be disasterous.

Really looking for a way to automate the MFCMapi steps.

1. Exported a copy of my 2010 hidden message (as a backup)
2. DELETED (hard/permanent) that hidden message in 2010
3. Exported a copy of the hidden message from my 2003 mailbox
4. Imported the hidden message from my 2003 mailbox, INTO my 2010 mailbox

Judy

[Judy_Glazier]

Hello Alex

We have been using select and delete within the ExchangeMailboxEntry table but we would really like to just truncate the whole table.  There are no journal mailboxes in that table.  We are doing this to update the hidden message in mailboxes on the Exchange 2010 servers.  These mailboxes are not to be archived, we just need the hidden message updated so they can use the AE button in Outlook to access their archived items that had been archived while they were still on the Exchange 2003 server.

These guys used Quest to copy the Exchange 2003 mailbox to the Exchange 2010 servers.  So in fact each enabled user has two mailboxes, one in each domain.  I know this is a different way of doing things but I still have to assist them in making this work.

When we migrated the EV servers to the new domain several hundred users had already been migrated to Exchange 2010 and they had the old hidden message that was copied over to the Exchange 2010 servers.  These users are unable to access their archives via Outlook and the AE button.  If they use a separate web page they can of course access their archives pointing to the new vault servers.  I have been using the select and then delete to get rid of the old and give them new hidden messages and it has been working for the most part it would just be alot easier to get rid of them all.

We were trying to truncate the ExchangeMailboxEntry table with the following

truncate table ExchangeMailboxEntry 

but we end up with the following:

Msg 4712, Level 16, State 1, Line 1
Cannot truncate table 'ExchangeMailboxEntry' because it is being referenced by a FOREIGN KEY constraint.

Do you know what we are doing wrong.  We are able to select individual lines to delete, but not truncate the whole table.

Judy Glazier

[TonySterling]

If you want all the rows deleted you could simply use delete without a WHERE clause

DELETE FROM ExchangeMailboxEntry