Mailbox Archives for Ex Employees

[pdunnigan1]

We have EV 12.0.3 for Exchange 2010. We have Ex Employees archives that are no longer needed and they are showing in the console mailbox archives with just a SID for these accounts. Is there a way to mass delete these archives in EV? 

thanks

Pat

[pdunnigan1]

Is there a script I could run in SQL that would tell me how much space is taken up by these accounts?

Pat

[VirgilDobos · Accepted solution]

There is a way to delete bulk archives which was discussed here on the forum. 

However, notice that deleting the items from SQL will only remove the archive entry from EV console, but won't remove the actual data from the vault store partitions and indexes. Hence, it will not free up space on storage.

Hence, the recommended option is to delete the archives from the EV console.

https://www.veritas.com/support/en_US/article.TECH49804

[garry_burns2]

The technote doesn't describe deleting anything from SQL but adding "ArchiveStatus = 4".

This seems to trigger EV's normal clean-up process to correctly delete the items and archive.

[Prone2Typos]

Item deletion is single threaded and super slow. Space re-acquisition will depend on sharing and collection configuration and you will not get a 1:1 reclaim to what you see "used". Changing the status as described marks the archive for deletion. Also if you have any sort of compliance or WORM hardware controlling retention OR vault store data integrity issues you will have a bumpier road than you imagine. I always request people to really consider if the grind is worth the salt here. Often I find having a configured and auctioned retention and expiration stragety you get more bang for your buck.