"Static" Archives

[rnt123]

Hello, I am talking with an organization that is migrating from GroupWise to a hosted Exchange 2007 environment. They want to do something that is a bit odd. A forest level trust will be established from their AD forest to the hosting provider, and they will start fresh with empty Exchange 2007 mailboxes. What they want to do is export all of the GroupWise content to PST files (they already have a tool that can do this from the Post Office / Domain side) and import the data into an Archive system such as Enterprise Vault. They want to grant normal users access to only their own old mail (now in the archive system) and grant an eDiscovery team the permissions to read all of the archived data to do eDiscovery across all archives. I was thinking that this could be done with shared archives in EV 10, and granting the Windows AD account permissions to the corresponding shared archive. The only kicker is that no changes can be made to the hosted Exchange 2007 environment (including the hosting provider’s AD), so the AD account from the trusted (non-mail) forest must be used to grant all permissions. This is the same forest where EV would be installed. Does this seem feasible? If so would it be possible to automate the creation of all the shared archives, importation of the PST data, and permission modification, with EVPM or a similar tool? There are 3,800 old mailboxes in question.  Remember that there will not be any real mailbox provisioning, no new data will be added to the EV archives, and they will just be for "historical" reference for user reference and eDiscovery needs. Thanks!

[JesusWept3]

Well since you won't be targeting Exchange at all, it doesn't matter what the hosted Exchange 2007 environment does.

Your best bet maybe to get an additional piece of migration software to import the PST's in to archives, such as Transvault, akaibu etc, that can automate the creation of archives and import the PST files etc

There no scripted ways that i know of, outside of custom development to create ad-hoc archives
Same with permissions.

The logic around EV is absolutely fine, just a lot of legwork.

Couple things to note
1. With DA and eDiscovery, you don't need to grant permissions to the archive, the EVAdmin has access to it all when used programatically and run under the context of the EVAdmin, which is exactly what DA does

2. Shared archives won't keep their folder structure, so you will have no distinction between Sent items/calendar/inbox etc, it will all be displayed as one folder

If you wanted to keep the structure you'd have to create a regular mailbox archive.
And to do that traditionally, you need a mailbox to provision against and enable first.
And if you were to import the PST, either through EVPM or VAC you would need the mailbox to be enabled, except for importing Shared Archives

Which is again why i'd suggest a third party tool
You may want to try talking to Tony Sterling with Quadrotech to see if they have any tools that may be appropriate to help, or AndrewB (Andrew Becker) on the forums to see if they can help you with anything that Transvault can accomplish

[A_J1]

Hi,

I think we have a VBSscript which can be used to create Archives..

secondly you have to import those PST manaully into the Archive or you can have third party to do it.. which will cost you..

You can either provide permission manually to the archive for the user or using EVPM..

[Prone2Typos]

I think that the other two posters are correct and this can be done but would require a lot of effort or additional software. If you would like to talk to someone at Globanet as to how we would go about it and how we can help ... message me and I will get someoen to reach out to you.

[rnt123]

Thansk Typo. I know a few contacts at Globanet as I have worked with them to get some of our customers off of Mimosa NearPoint to EV.