Migrating from Exchange 2007 to Exchange 2010 in Enterprise Vault environment

[GuruPrasadNS]

Hi,

After completing Exchange 2010 implementation in our enviroment where we have Enterprise Vault 9.0.4, we prepared all prerequisites required for migrating vault enabled user mailboxes to 2010.

Migrated VSA to 2010 and applied throttling policy and required permissions using the provided script.

Created new system mailboxes in default databases of Exchange 2010 mailbox servers which will not be part of the DAG.

Added new mailbox servers of Exchange 2010 DAG using the system mailboxes just created and found tasks are created automatically.

But here we found, except its default database, none of the active DAG databases in the mailboxe servers were listed under 'Targets' tab of archiving tasks. Don't know why or believe my understanding is wrong. My understanding from http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH165220 was that we can create system mailbox in a database which need not be in DAG, hence created it in the default database which is local to that mailbox server. Here is what I read in the article "When using Database Availability Groups (DAG) the system mailbox should be placed either on a database that is active on the target server or on a database that has no other copies".

Next, we have also created one journal mailbox for each mailbox server in the same default local database and created journal tasks, but while running provisioning task we are seeing this "Mailboxes on Exchange Server [exchange server name] that have entries in the Enterprise Vault database but which are not in any provisioning group: /o=test/ou=Exchange Administrative Group (FYDIBOHF23SPDLT)/cn=Recipients/cn=EVJournal01 (state = new)" in the provisioning task reports, why?

Please help me here, since there are so many documents and none giving detailed info after introducing Exchange 2010 in to Enterprise Vault enviroment.

-Rgds, Guru.

[JesusWept3]

How are you doing the provisioning?
By LDAP? Security Groups? Distribution Lists? Per user?
It could just be that the Journal Mailbox is getting picked up because its a member of a group or a distribution list or that its being picked up as part of the entire exchange org....

As for the databases not showing, if you log on to the Enterprise Vault server as the EVAdmin account, open up Outlook 2007 and then create a new mail profile targeting a mailbox (not the system mailbox) that is part of those Databases, are you able to login without being prompted for credentials?

You may want to specify a GC that points at the Exchange 2010 CAS Servers.
Also for the permissions and throttling policies, did you use the ones that come with EV 9.0.1?
I know there were a fair number of changes in the latest service packs to change other attributes to the throttling policy that aren't in the 9 SP1 version, so you may want to apply a later throttling policy script than EV9 SP1's

[GuruPrasadNS]

Hi Alex, provisioning is being done targetting a security group. Journal mailbox is not part of this security group. Also along with the journal mailbox we have blackberry admin mailbox and couple of other test mailboxes also which is not showing up in provisioning task report. Getting difficult to understand this.

Regarding databases, what we did is whenever we move a mailbox which is part of provisioning group to another database and run the provisioning task, the database starts appearing. Like this we are adding all the databases of the DAG. Is it like this or not, did not find the info anywhere. But what read is all the active databases in a mailbox server would appear under Targets when a system mailbox is present in that mailbox server and provisioning task is run. This is not happening so.

All the DCs are GCs in our environment and EV residing AD site has two DCs apart from the location has totally four AD sites and each site has two DCs each. So totally there are 8 DCs in the location where EV is residing, hence not going to specify GC setting.

Throttling policy applied manually and permissions are granted using the script coming with 9.0.4 version.

- Rgds, Guru.

[JesusWept3 · Accepted solution]

Well typically in most organizations with DAG's and multiple CAS servers you have a load balancer
So it goes to multiple CAS Servers, anywho, with Exchange 2010, specify that array as the GC so you're targeting the CAS directly and not relying on AD/GC

As for the provisioning issue, i re-read it, so basically the journaling mailbox thinks it needs to be provisioned, usually that happens when you perform EV actions (such as Store In Vault, Cancel Pending etc), after that you find that journaling throws an error in the event viewer where it sees need to be provisioned

One thing you can do is remove the journal archive in the VAC then delete the journal entry out of ExchangeMailboxEntry table and then re-add the journal mailbox and it should go away

[GuruPrasadNS]

Thank you, Alex.

Provisioning report reporting about Journal mailboxes have gone now after following your procedure.

Regards, Guru.