Legacy Archives (Domino) - Unable to be accessed.

[wandarah]

Howdy Folks, 

I've a customer who has a failed EV installation, which has been in this state for some time. Before the solution failed however, they were archiving mail from Domino. The current EV solution is EV 7 (unsure of SP). They now wish to move forward with an upgrade, but ALSO want to recover the mail/files stored in those archives. 

I've yet to visit the site, so I'm not sure what, if any, can be done in terms of remedial work to get the current environment going - but the driver is to upgrade to EV 10 regardless. If the solution is in such a state that it's unable to be 'repaired', I'd have to go ahead and design a new EV 10 environment. 

My issue, then, obviously, becomes what to do with the legacy archives. 

As far as I'm aware, theres no way to attach those files to a potential new environment as archives, is there? I know there are tools which will repopulate SQL tables by examining save-sets, but I believe that won't work in this case. 

My only options really, are to try and export those archives back to mailboxes, or .nsf files - yes - or upgrade the broken environemnt somehow and move them across to the new site? Just thought I'd consult the 'munnity on it. 

[TonySterling]

Well it is hard to say without knowing exactly what they considered failed. 

I think you maybe mistaken about the EV version.  I am pretty sure Domino mailbox archiving was first introduced in EV 2007.  EV 7 could only archive Domino journal mail.

How large of an installation, like number of users, size of archived items?  Things like that will determine if it is worth upgrading or just exporting to NSF and re-importing in a new environment.

It could be you can just patch things up and get it stable again and upgrade from there.

[wandarah]

Hi Tony, 

Well let's assume it's busted and can't be fixed in the timeframe the customer requires. So I'm left with a bunch of savesets stored on disc somewhere. They're totally orphaned at this point, and cannot be ingested or moved, or migrated into a new site without a semi-functional, at least, current site?

I think your'e right re EV version - sorry, I've just checked the latest compat guide - though it suggests that EV 8 is required for mailbox archiving. In which case I'm probably dealing with Journal archives. 

[TonySterling]

You would at the very least need to be able to export these files to NSF.

[wandarah]

Just an update. 

Exporting to .nsf is possible, and we've got a working process for that in place. So that's dandy. 

They've a bunch of issues surrounding search, restore etc - but this appears to be a configuration issue(s). 

So from a high-level the plan is to:

1. Export current archives

2. Disable mailboxes

3. Build new EV site +EVDG

4. Enable mailboxes

5. Import .nsf files

Any obvious gotchas here? AFAIK, you should simply be able to disable the mailbox, and enable the mailbox from a different site without issue. Please correct me if I'm wrong. 

Thanks. 

[TonySterling · Accepted solution]

Nope, that sounds like it will work.  One thing, are they going to purge the old shortcuts before you import?  i would recommend doing so.

Also, you might want to zap all the mailboxes to clean up the profile.

Domino Profile Document Tool syntax

Article: HOWTO58402

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Created: 2011-08-01

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Updated: 2012-03-31

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Article URL http://www.symantec.com/docs/HOWTO58402

[wandarah]

Yeah - exporting archive, not MB and is occuring without shortcuts so I'm told - I have to check this, of course. 

Thanks for the link to Domino Profile Tool - couldn't remember how to do it (oh Domino, you so rarely spend time with me). 

Cheers Tony!