Will EV client 10.x work with EV server 8.x (basic features only)?

[ChristianKalz]

We are currently running EV servers version 8.x on Windows 2003 and EV clients version 8.x on Windows XP (with MS Office 2007). There are more or less detailed plans for a EV server in-place upgrade to version 9.x within the next 3 months or so. A later upgrade to EV server 10.x requires much more time and effort as a hardware and OS refresh is being required to support EV10.

In parallel my IT department is preparing a mass-rollout of a new Windows 7 image including Microsoft Office 2010 and a more current EV plugin. The question is now about the EV client version to start with in the initial Windows 7 rollout:

As we would like to avoid another EV client upgrade just a few weeks/months after the initial Windows 7 image rollout, we would prefer to pre-load the Win7 image with the latest and greatest EV 10.x client from the beginning. However the EV servers will run on version 8.x for some period of time which is not officially supported according to Symantec's compatibility matrix.

Even so this client-server combination is officially unsupported, are basic features (e.g. archive, restore, open shortcut) working in such combination?

Many thanks in advance,

Christian.

[AndrewB · Accepted solution]

base features should work but you might get a warning about the version not being supported and also be aware of compatibility issues between EV 8.x and office 2010. i would recommend testing it in your environment and determining the results for yourself.

[ZeRoC00L]

Why not already upgrade your exising environment to EV. As you say it's just an in place upgrade. Upgrade can be done pretty quickly. EV9 server and EV10 client is supported, see the Compatability Charts.

[ChristianKalz]

Hi Andrew,

Thanks for your quick reply!

What do you mean with "compatibility issues between EV 8.x and office 2010"?  My thought is that the Office version running on the CLIENT is totally unrelated to the EV server.

Note: We are not intending to upgrade our EV8 servers to Office (Outlook) 2010 at this time. This might change however, if EV 9 requires a new Outlook version on the server.

[ChristianKalz]

We will definitely upgrade the EV servers to 9.0 SP4 as soon as possible. The problem is "only" timing. I'm working for a fairly large company with major offices in all geographical regions around the globe. Planning and testing a system upgrade for dozends of EV servers which involves several IT organizations in various time zones can take "a bit" longer than a simple double-click on setup.exe :)

We have also to consider such nice things called ITIL, SOX, and so on ...

[Rob_Wilcox1]

On the server .. do not go to Outlook 2010.  It is NOT supported.

On the client .. the EV 8 Outlook Addin does not work with Outlook 2010.  So if your end users use, or intend to use, Outlook 2010 then you need a 'higher' version of the EV Outlook Add-in.

[ChristianKalz]

I have been running some test scenarios the last 2 days and here are my findings ...

Server platform: Windows 2003 SP2 32bit, EV 8.0 SP5; Echange 2007 SP3

Client platform: Windows 7 SP1 x64, Office 2010 32bit, EV 10 SP2 CU1

Use Case	Test results
Outlook start and EV plugin loads w/o error message or popup	passed
Store in vault	passed (partly)
Restore from vault	passed
Open archived items	passed
Search in vault and open Archive Explorer	passed
Viewing or changing Vault properties on select mail folder	failed (as expected)
Vault cache	not tested yet

The only limitation in my scenario is the client's inability to display or change a mail folder's vault properties (e.g. retention category) or to allow a user to chose a rention category for manual archiving. Both is expected as the EV8 server does not support the HTTP communication protocol being used by the unified client introduced with EV10 SP1.

[Rob_Wilcox1]

I think that your results are correct.. but you should be advised that Support may not do a lot to help you if you encounter any issues.  Since the configuration isn't listed in the Compatibility Charts.