Need an automated way to change the indexing level for ~1000 users

[Ram_EUHR]

Hello,

We found that there are ~1000 users whose indexing levels are in-correctly set to 'Full'. We manage the 'indexing level settings' via the mailbox policy and so the new users have the correct indexing level set (which is 'Brief'). But we need to fix the indexing level for these ~1000 affected users as a one time fix.

Doing this change manually from GUI will be a tedious and time consuming task. So, wanted to know if we have any easy/automated way to perform this operation?

We were thinking of updating the DB ('EnterpriseVaultDirectory.IndexSettings.IndexingLevel' column) directly but we were not sure about the side-effects (if any).

-Ram

[GertjanA]

Hello Ram,

updating any setting in SQL is not supported by symantec.

Is there an issue having these users at full? I find that most installations I am at find the full indexing level much more usefull than brief. You also need to take in account that if you want it to be brief, you will have to rebuild the indexes for those users to get them back to brief.

The diskspace might be an issue, but as the difference between full and brief is not that large, I would leave them at full.

[Ram_EUHR]

>> Is there an issue having these users at full?

Yes, it's using too much of space. Hence, we want it to be set to 'Brief'.

>>  You also need to take in account that if you want it to be brief, you will have to rebuild the indexes for those users to get them back to brief.

Yes, we are aware of that. Thanks for pointing it out though.

Doing this change manually from GUI will be a tedious and time consuming task. So, wanted to know if we have any easy/automated way to perform this operation?

-Ram

[GertjanA]

If diskspace is already an issue, you might want to add a little more storage :)

As for fixing this, I suggest you talk to Symantec. They might have a solution using SQL, and if they propose it, it should be ok to execute.

You might also be able to do something like the below:

Disable the users for archiving. Export the archives to PST, with the option to remove the exported items

Delete the archives.

Re-enable the users, make sure the indexing level is brief.

Import the PST's back into the new archives.

I do realize that doing the above for 1000+ users is not fun, but there might not be another way.

[JesusWept3]

The sql change will work but honestly saving 5% of disk space sounds like a temporary measure at best because you'll be back in this situation pretty quickly But cover your bases, contact support, give them the query you are going to run, they will most likely say you can run it etc but make backups of the DB etc But agreed with gertjan, it will only help you right now but you'll be back in this situation soon

[Ram_EUHR]

Thanks for your response Gertjan and Jesus.

One of your previous post came to our rescue Jesus (https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/forums/rebuild-ev-indexes-mass-users).

We are testing it out by directly running the SQL queries and hopefully that should help.

We know that we won’t save much of space because of this but want to keep it uniform across users and save some space because we replicate this data to our disaster recovery site as well.

-Ram