Question and opinion on Vault Upgrades

[plendman33]

I am currently running Vault 8.0.1.1560 on a Windows server 2003 R2 SP2. I am looking to see if it makes sense to upgrade to 8.0 SP1 or 9.0 for a couple of reasons.

1. I would like to be able to do a restore of an entire mailbox.

2. I would like to see if the upgrades make the backup and clean up of the vaults easier and if so which one makes life the easeist.

If someone could give me some insite on the doing one of these upgrades without having to jump to the next version if possible I would be very greatful. Or if anyone has an opinion on going to other service packs or versions (Excluding 10.0 since that requires a new Win Server 2008 R2) like 8.3, 8.4, 8.5, 9.1 etc.. that makes sense let me know.

Thank you for your time.

[AndrewB · Accepted solution]

I dont think that either of those are new enhancements to EV. In general, if you're not able to go to 10 then I would recommend 9 SP3. If you're not able to go to 9 then at least get on the latest SP for 8. Since you're not able to go to 10 I won't start talking about the new features that it has.

[WiTSend]

I would highly recommend upgrading to v9sp3 (the most recent version).  There are always updates, tweeks, rollups, etc... that generally make the latest version the most reliable and capable.  The backup process in 9 is pretty much the same as 8.  None of them (including 10) give you the ability to do a single archive restore. 

[plendman33]

What about the backup process in 10 do you feel like that process has been streamlined more so then 9 or do you feel that is the same as well.

[plendman33]

If I created a new server and went to 10 do you think the new features on there make things more efficient then 9 backup wise at least in your opinion?  

[WiTSend]

We're in the process of designing our migration to EV10 now but I don't see anything that changes the process for backups.  The most important element is to have a very stable storage platform for the archives.  EV is designed to be the final repository for data and thus backups should only be used for DR purposes.  What is the particular use case that you see that necessitates individual archive level restores?

[plendman33]

The reason for the individual archive restore is that we have pst's of inactive users that have folders in their vaults and in order to move their data off of our vault server and place in off site storage we have to restore the data from their vaults folder by folder which is time consuming and inefficient. So im looking for anything that will make this process easier, even restoring at least at the top folder level even subfolder level would be a great help.  

[GertjanA]

If possible goto 9.03. This has several performance, reliability and manageability fixes and updates.

As for exporting, why don't you export the archive of the user to a PST. You can export complete archives in 1 go. No need to check for folders, just export the whole bunch. Once exported, delete the archive.

Or am I missing a point?

[plendman33]

The pst's can be created but the problem remains that the data stored in the users vault does not get pst'ed. Only the shortcut to those files get converted leaving the data still in the vault system. This is a problem if the pst removed and then lets say a while later if the pst is restored the vault shortcuts will be empty. So before we pst or archive a users email we need to restore every vault file one by one to place on a media for off site storage. This becomes inefficient because we have users that have multiple folders of email in their vaild and going through each folder and restoring file by file becomes a pain.