In this article we will have a look at creating the EV Mailbox Archive task for Exchange 2016 server.

To know how to configure the storage can refer my previous post

Configure New Store, storage , provisioning groups in Enterprise Vault in Exchange Environment

To know the overview of the services can refer my previous post

All about enterprise vault services and its tasks

There are new additional configurations for the newly introduced Exchange 2016 in any environment for the Enterprise Vault archive to happen on them.We need to provision and target those servers for the archive to happen on their mailboxes.

As a first procedure we need to create system mailboxes for each new Exchange 2016 servers for the archive to happen on their mailboxes.System mailbox is nothing a dedicated mailbox which we need to create for the EV archive to happen on that server.
This mailbox should not be used for any other jobs and should not be hidden from the Address List.

Once we create this dedicated system mailboxes on new Exchange 2016 servers we need to grant permission to the Vault service account that is responsible to start the EV task on Exchange servers.Grant send as permission to the Vault service account on the newly created  Enterprise vault system mailboxes for Exchange 2016 archive to happen.

Its better we can move the Vault Service account to the Exchange 2016 server from the legacy server. This will not impact the previous exchange servers EV Archive process until the migration is complete.

Once this is done we need to run two powershell scripts  on the new Exchange servers to set the throttling policy and permission for the Enterprise Vault Service account.

These scripts are present by default on the Enterprise Vault Server in the below directory.

All we need to do is just need to copy these scripts on the Exchange server 2016 and run them as below

To set the EVthrottling policy run the below command 
.\SetEVThrottlingPOlicy.ps1  -User domain\username -server mbxserver -Version 2013 -DomainController DCname

Domain is the AD that the vault service account belongs to.
User name is the vault service account.
Server name is the Exchange 2016 server name.

Version is 2013 currently for 2016 server as well

To Assign Exchange Server permissions to the vault service account run the below command:
.\SetEVExchangePermissions.ps1 -user domain\user-name
domain is the AD that the vault service account belongs to
user name is the vault service account
server name is the Exchange 2016 server name

Once the above procedure is completed we need to create the target from the Enterprise Vault Server to the new Exchange 2016 servers

Inorder to do that

Login to Enterprise Vault Server with Enterprise Vault Service account

Open vault Admin Console

Navigate to Targets – Domain – Exchange server – New – Exchange Server

Proceed with the next option

Select the Exchange Mailbox Task

Select the system mailbox to use.Here we need to choose the designated EV system mailboxes that we created.

Once this is done the targets for the new server is successfully created.

Now we need to create a task for the each new Exchange 2016 servers for the archive to happen

In-order to do that open Vault admin console – Navigate to task – new exchange mailbox task.

Proceed with the next option

Choose the new provisioned Exchange 2016 Server

Once the new task for Exchange 2016 has been created we can schedule the archive period and the DB’s of those servers will be visible on the targets.

Do not make any change on the concurrent connections and the logon accounts on the task service its better to have them default.

After this is done we can move the mailboxes to Exchange 2016 from the previous version of exchange server.The provisioning group , targets and the retention policies will remain the same for the mailboxes moved to the exchange 2016 server.

Note: These steps are applicable only on a environment where there is an already existing Enterprise Vault configured on the legacy Exchange servers. These steps will be useful when we need to enable archive on newly introduced exchange servers. For a new configuration on the environment the Symantec configuration guide needs to be followed.

Thanks & Regards
Sathish Veerapandian
MVP – Office Servers & Services