In this article we will have a look at the steps to provision the Enterprise Vault in the Storage, Policy and Group level.

If we talk about Enterprise Vault its again a big topic considering all the functionalities ,configuration , features , HA etc..,

So here we will focus only on how to provision archive only for end users in a new deployment

We will need to look at the steps to consider in creating a storage, Backup , creating policy based on the retention that end users are expecting.

So below things needs to be planned properly before the configuration:

a) Archive policy based on mailbox quota and number of months. eg: If the quota exceeds 80 percent and emails  greater than 5 months should be archived.

b) Archive retention period for end users. How long the archived emails will stay eg: like 5 years, 7 years etc

c) Retention of the shortcuts archived items in the mailbox after the archive.

Once planning on the above is done we need to configure Provisioning group, Archive policy and create a store group and a store for the archive process to happen.

Below things needs to be created :

a) Create a provisioning group to target the users who require the archive feature to be enabled.

b) Create a dedicated policy for this group based on the requirement.

c) Create a dedicated store-group and store to place all the archive .

d) Configure the backup for these stores.

 

We will look into the steps to create provisioning group first

Log in to the Vault Administration console and navigate to provisioning groups and select new provisioning group

 

Give a name

Associate the targets for this group

Targets can be OU’s, Whole domain, Distribution Group. The best practice is to always target a Distribution group and add users who require EV since the OU’s will contain service accounts, vendor mailboxes which will unnecessarily consume licenses.

Then later you need to select the policy that you would need to apply for this group of users based on your requirement.

Set the retention category

Select the associated store and enable the option automatically provision the mailboxes for people who comes under this group

 

Now we will look in creating the Policy

It is better to have multiple policies since its always better to segregate users based on their quota, nature of job and the amount of emails they receive on daily basis.

To create a New Policy Open Vault Admin Console – Navigate to policies and create a new mailbox policy.

 

 

These are the default values once its created. Based on your requirement you can modify these values.

 

There is nothing much complexity involved in creating the policy but yes if the users retention is not understood properly then later you would be in trouble. So its better to set the clear expectations to the end users before setting the policy.

 

Now we should look in creating a store for the archived mailboxes.

Its better to create a store group first

 

Then create a Store under the Store group

 

You will get the below window

Give it a name and select the option whether open or closed. If you keep  this partition open then partition rollover can happen if any of the other partition are full. If you keep it closed then rollover to this partition will not happen.

Select the storage type by default it is NTFS

Then you need to specify the drives and drive path and finally you have to perform the run test which will indicate a success or failure of your config

This is the partition rollover which i was taking in earlier screenshots which is an amazing feature

You have an option to set the volume and time

Here you go for setting the backup for this partition. The beauty of the archive is when you create the store by specifying the SQL instance location the DB’s are automatically created.

So now these values needs to be chosen according to the type of backup you are using.

If you have a snap shot EV unaware backup then you need to select the option check for a trigger file.

If you have a EV aware backup most likely backup exec from Symantec then you can use the first option.

Note: Its very important that you need to keep in mind that these backups will never help you in restoring brick level for end users. These are meant only for system recovery scenarios.

So when a user permanently deletes an archive from EV its gone forever.

Then you need to use the file collection software if you are using the second option

And enter the time at which you need to place this file collection software.

After this once you click on finish the archive is configured to take place.So based on your Archiving Mailbox server Task schedule the archiving job would start happening.

There are few more backup configurations that needs to be done if you choose the 2nd option. We will look  that seperately in another write up since adding those information will definitely confuse and increase the length of reading this blog.

Thanks 

Sathish Veerapandian

MVP – Exchange Server