Release of user licenses

[Vladimir_Sukoch]

Hello all.

As we found out we have 6500 licenses for SYMC ENTERPRISE VAULT STORAGE MANAGEMENT FOR MICROSOFT EXCHANGE 10.0 WIN. As per Vault Store Usage Report now we have about 6200 active archives. Is it correct that now we have about 300 free licenses for end-users? In a few months we will have additional 2000 users migrating into infrastucture. After investigation we found that we have about 700 users with 0 items in Evault archives (0 mb) and accounts disabled in AD, it was agreed to delete these mailboxes from Evault. Such users cannot be found in Disable Mailbox Wizard, but I can see archives in Exchange mailboxes archives. Is it OK to delete such mailboxes from Exchange mailbox list or any steps should be done? Also, is it possible to make more eaisier and one by one?The last question, could you advise how it's possible to calculate licenses usage?  Check using https://www.veritas.com/community/forums/enterprise-vault-licenses-how-much-used#comment-8310801 and all 6200 are in use- seems to be incorrect or no? Thanks in advance.

[TonySterling]

I sounds like you didn't disable the mailboxes before you deleted their AD account and/or mailbox.  Once you clean that up you will be able to get a better count.

[Vladimir_Sukoch]

Is it possible to perform cleanup in Evault without disabling Exchange mailboxes? As I understand these archives just take the license, but really theat are not in use. Most of them before disabling in AD were deleted from Evault AD groups, so, for now they are not in any provisioning group, they just have an empty archive.

[TonySterling]

This Technote should help:

https://www.veritas.com/support/en_US/article.000088035

Enterprise Vault needs to query Active Directory in order to build a list of available mailboxes and Exchange Servers that host them. This is done via the Provisioning Task.

In the Admin Console under the Targets > Exchange section you have the Provisioning Groups. This is a list of groups, in hierarchical order, which have their own specific Active Directory targets, which can be Groups or Individuals.

When the Provisioning Task runs, it looks for all Active Directory users that fall under the first groups target. For each, it finds an entry in the ExchangeMailboxEntry table or creates an entry for that user and their mailbox. The task will process each group, starting with number 1 until the last and will apply the policy settings for the first Provisioning group it encounters.

When mailboxes or AD entries are deleted, Enterprise Vault will not update the ExchangeMailboxEntry table to disable archiving. Disabling  archiving has to be performed manually for the mailbox within the Admin Console.
 

Useful SQL Queries: 

1. This will give the number of all enabled mailboxes that have been pulled from AD since the 18th March 2013:
   
   Select Count(*) from ExchangeMailboxEntry where mbxarchivingstate = 1 and lastmodified > '2013-03-18 00:00:000'
    
2. This will give the number of mailboxes enabled for archiving:
   
   Select Count(*) from ExchangeMailboxEntry where mbxarchivingstate = 1 
   
   Note: 0=New users, 1= Active archiving mailboxes, 2=Disabled mailboxes.
    
3. This will give the number of mailboxes pulled from AD since EnterpriseVault was installed in the organization:
   
   Select Count(*) from ExchangeMailboxEntry
   
   To get a specific list of the names replace Count(*) with * and to get a list of all disabled mailboxes change the mbxarchivingstate = 1 to mbxarchivingstate = 2.
    
4. These results can then be used to manually disable a large group of mailboxes that no longer exist by using the following query.
   
   Update ExchangeMailboxEntry set mbxarchivingstate = 2 where mbxarchivingstate = 1 and lastmodified > '2013-03-18 00:00:000' and exchangembxtype != 2
   
   Note: Replace '2013-03-18 00:00:000' with the date previous to that which the last provisioning task was successfully run.

[Vladimir_Sukoch]

Hello, I have another question regarding licensing and disabling accounts. Could you explain what settings will be applied on archive after we disable mailbox in EV console? for example, what Retention policy will be applied?

[GertjanA]

Hello Vladimir,

It is best practice to post a new question as a new discussion. This way, people will look at it sooner. Adding a new question to an existing case will sometimes not be seen, as people might think it is an addition to the existing question.

If you disable the mailbox in Enterprise Vault, the only thing you do is telling EV to not archive the mailbox anymore. The archive itself for that mailbox will keep the retention it has when the archive was created, and items were archived.

Greetz.

[Vladimir_Sukoch]

Sorry GertjanA,

I haven't started a new topic because my questions related to the same topic of releasing EV licenses. I found out that we have had the incorrect process of leavers for 2 years- we haven't disabled mailboxes in EV before disabling AD account and deleting mailboxes from Exchange. To my mind we should have about 1-2k such users. I've run the queues from https://www.veritas.com/support/en_US/article.000088035

Select * from ExchangeMailboxEntry where mbxarchivingstate = 2

and as I can see only 34 disabled mailboxes and about 9k mailboxes enabled mailboxes using key mbxarchivingstate = 1.  I'd like to lauch the last command 

"Update ExchangeMailboxEntry set mbxarchivingstate = 2 where mbxarchivingstate = 1 and lastmodified > '2013-03-18 00:00:000' and exchangembxtype != 2" but in read mode, just to see affected users and start the CR.

I tried to use command the command "select COUNT(*) from ExchangeMailboxEntry where mbxarchivingstate = 1 and lastmodified > '2016-11-06 00:00:000' and exchangembxtype != 2" but I received 7400 affected users from 9k. As I checked randomly users from the list are enabled in AD and Evault works for them properly. Seems something is wrong in the command. How can I receive the appropriate list with affected users? And I assume if I launch the origin command to apply changes it will disable mailboxes for active users. How is it possible to prevent it? thanks,