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Two Journals Need Retention Category Changed

tmdasher
Level 2

Good morning!

I have an issue I'd like some community assistance with... We have two Journaled Mailboxes, we'll call them Old Journal and New Journal. They both share the same retention category, at this time... "Permanent" (Brilliant idea from whomever the "first" admin was...), and I need to purge all but the most recent two years on the Old Journal, while leaving everything in the New Journal as Permanent. I realize this can't be done without some interesting solutions, and that's what I'm here for... the interesting solutions.

What would everyone recommend as the best way to do this? I contacted support, and their recommendation was to export the New Journal to a .pst, create a new retention category specifically for it, then import the .pst to the mailbox via Exchange, and let the archiving re-archive using the new retention category. I'd like to avoid that solution if at all possible, because we're talking about a .pst file that's 100 mailboxes over the last 2+ years. Not something I want to even try.

So, what can I do? My end result, I'd like to have the Old Journal with a retroactive retention of 2 years, and the New Journal still permanent, or perhaps legal hold?

Am I correct that if I change the category of one of either Journal, it has no effect on the items which were archived using the previous retention category? And that only if I change the retention time on the existing retention category will it be retroactive?

Thanks for everyone's time!

Tim Dasher

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Accepted Solutions

Ben_Watts
Level 6
Employee Accredited
Bottom line:- Example:- RetentionCategory1 = Forever NewRetentionCategory = 2 years If you have a mailbox where items have been archived from with RetentionCategory1 the only way to retrospectively change the amount of time assigned to those items is by changing the time on RetentionCategory1 itself, that IS retrospective. If you change the actual Retention Category which is applied to the items when they are archived from that mailbox (NewRetentionCategory) ONLY the items archived from the point of the change of Retention Category will have the new Retention Category applied to them, all the old items (already archived items) will have RetentionCategory1 assigned to them. Therefore, as both dcVAST and WiTSend say, you will have to do a bit of SQL work. As they also say, this is NOT a supported operation in any way shape or form as you are, in effect, 'hacking' the SQL DB entries so if it goes wrong you wont be in a supported situation. But altering the entries in the Saveset table is really the only way of doing it (other than exporting the items to PST/Mailbox then ingesting to the Archive again with a new RC), especially for a Journal Archive where you have thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of items in the Archive. The entry you will want to look at is the RetentionCategoryIdentity within the Saveset table, but you will ONLY want to change those entries which relate to the correct ArchivePointId (I believe that is the name of the column in the Saveset table) Steps to find the entries you may be interested in:- 1) Create new RetentionCategory 2) Run below SQL query to find out the RetentionCategoryIdentity for the new Retention Category USE EnterpriseVaultDirectory SELECT * FROM RetentionCategoryEntry Find the RetentionCategoryIdentity for the NEW Retention Category 3) From within the VAC find the ArchiveID for the Archive you want to change the Retention Category for, see Properties of the Journal Archive 4) To find all the items you may be interested in run the below against the Vault Store DB that the Journal Archive is archived to SELECT * FROM Saveset WHERE ArchivePointIdentity = ( SELECT ArchivePointIdentity FROM ArchivePoint WHERE ArchivePointID = '%ArchiveID%' ) I can't give you the query to change the values for obvious reasons. Again, this is 100% UNSUPPORTED and I honestly do not suggest you change the entries in SQL unless absolutely 100% unavoidable. IF you do decide to go ahead with it then I STRONG suggest you take a full working backup of the entire EV environment in case things go belly up. This is something that our customers have been asking for a long time and I do believe it MAY be something that could be in the pipeline.

View solution in original post

5 REPLIES 5

dcVAST
Level 5
Partner Accredited

The export recommendation is a good option. If you set a new Retention Category it does not retroactively change what is archived. You would have to do this in SQL, which Symantec does not support. But I've had success doing this in the past.
 

WiTSend
Level 6
Partner

It will take some work ins SQL but I would create a new retention category of 2 years and then find (in SQL) all the Savesets in the old VS and change their retention category to the new 2year retention category.  Obviously you'd need to do a full backup of the SQL databases first.  I can help with the specific tables/columns it requested.  Exporting and importing will work, but its a very long process and has lots of potential for mangled data.

Ben_Watts
Level 6
Employee Accredited
Bottom line:- Example:- RetentionCategory1 = Forever NewRetentionCategory = 2 years If you have a mailbox where items have been archived from with RetentionCategory1 the only way to retrospectively change the amount of time assigned to those items is by changing the time on RetentionCategory1 itself, that IS retrospective. If you change the actual Retention Category which is applied to the items when they are archived from that mailbox (NewRetentionCategory) ONLY the items archived from the point of the change of Retention Category will have the new Retention Category applied to them, all the old items (already archived items) will have RetentionCategory1 assigned to them. Therefore, as both dcVAST and WiTSend say, you will have to do a bit of SQL work. As they also say, this is NOT a supported operation in any way shape or form as you are, in effect, 'hacking' the SQL DB entries so if it goes wrong you wont be in a supported situation. But altering the entries in the Saveset table is really the only way of doing it (other than exporting the items to PST/Mailbox then ingesting to the Archive again with a new RC), especially for a Journal Archive where you have thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of items in the Archive. The entry you will want to look at is the RetentionCategoryIdentity within the Saveset table, but you will ONLY want to change those entries which relate to the correct ArchivePointId (I believe that is the name of the column in the Saveset table) Steps to find the entries you may be interested in:- 1) Create new RetentionCategory 2) Run below SQL query to find out the RetentionCategoryIdentity for the new Retention Category USE EnterpriseVaultDirectory SELECT * FROM RetentionCategoryEntry Find the RetentionCategoryIdentity for the NEW Retention Category 3) From within the VAC find the ArchiveID for the Archive you want to change the Retention Category for, see Properties of the Journal Archive 4) To find all the items you may be interested in run the below against the Vault Store DB that the Journal Archive is archived to SELECT * FROM Saveset WHERE ArchivePointIdentity = ( SELECT ArchivePointIdentity FROM ArchivePoint WHERE ArchivePointID = '%ArchiveID%' ) I can't give you the query to change the values for obvious reasons. Again, this is 100% UNSUPPORTED and I honestly do not suggest you change the entries in SQL unless absolutely 100% unavoidable. IF you do decide to go ahead with it then I STRONG suggest you take a full working backup of the entire EV environment in case things go belly up. This is something that our customers have been asking for a long time and I do believe it MAY be something that could be in the pipeline.

tmdasher
Level 2

Thank you all for your informative and candid comments!

I'm not sure what to do now, at all... I would like to avoid SQL modifications, as they're not supported, which could land us in a scary situation, but as you said, we have thousands, or more likely, hundreds of theousands of emails that we'd be exporting into a .pst, and re-importing, and hoping all goes well. That's not much more pleasant-sounding than the SQL modifications. Heheh.

I'll have to discuss with my manager and our legal department, and try to determine what course of action they want me to take.

Joyous. :p

Thanks again, everyone... I'll let you know what we decide on and how it goes, asap.

GertjanA
Moderator
Moderator
Partner    VIP    Accredited Certified

As a side note, how old is the oldest item in the New Journal Mailbox?

Did both Journal Archives get items added, or is old really old, not used anymore?

I am thinking like this:

Journal Old = old mails

Journal New = only mails younger than 2 years.

Create an (again) new Journal Archive, set the new retention on that one. Set the existing retention to a safe value (like 3 years?) then let EV expire items from the 2 now 'closed'  archives. When done, you might be looking at a much smaller export, and or lesser items to modify.

There are re-classification tools, but those have a cost obviously.

Og, and about ' permanent', I've seen a few environments, and there are not many companies who actually have a retetntion policy implemented. They either don't care (let's keep everything forever, just in case), or think about this when it is too late.

 

 

Regards. Gertjan