In this article we will have a look at enabling vault cache in veritas enterprise vault.

What is Vault Cache?

Vault cache is like a personal folder  or local copy  of their archived data which can be enabled and presented to end users in outlook. This can be  limited based on size of the file  and  can be enabled only for few users based on the requirement.

When this option is enabled it is provides  a local pst folder mapping  of users archived data to end user  through virtual vault. This wizard starts automatically once after we enable this option on server side and we need to run this setup only once from the end user side.

Follow the below steps to enable vault cache in enterprise vault:

Logon to Enterprise Vault – expand the policies container – navigate to  exchange  desktop policy  and select properties – click on Vault cache tab Click on enable – make vault cache available for users.

Once done we get the below warning to ensure that the cache location have enough space in addition to other vault operations that takes place from this location. Because enabling this option adds extra files in this location during the end user actions.

We can check the vault cache location  and cache size in below location

Open vault admin console – navigate to enterprise vault – right click on ev server properties – click on cache tab- Make sure that you have added some extra space based on the number of users that we are going to assign this policy to end users

Once enabled we have the following options

we can allow users to decide whether they can choose this option or leave them not to enable and access from EV store.

We have option to limit the archive download on GB. When this option is enabled  and it reaches the maximum level the oldest item is deleted and later the new items are copied over here.

In content strategy we have  3 options

Do not store any items in cache:

When this option is enabled only item headers are synchronized in the  vault cache and the content still remains in the vault store partition.

Store all items:

When this option is enabled it stores the item headers and the content from the server and maintains them as a local copy.

Store only items that user opens:

When this option is enabled it stores the local copy of headers and content of  only the items users retrieves from the client.

The rest below features that we see are the outlook client options that we can control on the end users based on our requirement.

There are few more features in the advanced tab which helps admins to determine the vault cache settings and provide them based on the requirement.

On switching to advanced tab – list settings from vault cache

We can specify the download age limit. Default vault is 0. This helps  admins to control the size of the download cache to the clients.

We have an option to control the download age limit from server side and not providing this option to end user to make decision.

There are few more options which can be modified based on our requirement.

The most important thing is that we have an option to enable this feature for the delegated archive. We have option to enable all type of archives, default archive only the user mailbox and all mailbox and shared archive. This setting is mandatory required if we need to enable Virtual Vault for archives other than a user’s default archive.

Below are the advantages of virtual vault:

1. User will be to access archived items when offline  even when they are away from internet connection.
2. Users can perform parallel multiple retrievals at the same time and will come from local content directly.
3. Virtual Vault looks exactly like a mailbox or mapped PST file. This makes the users comfortable on opening the archived items directly and not from shortcuts. They can drag and drop items to and from mailbox to virtual vault.

Points to consider:

1. When we enable this option and disable for end users no new vault archives will be enabled for users, however the old downloaded archives will still be present.
2. A Vault Cache is a local copy of a user’s Enterprise Vault archive and stored on the users local computer.  As a best practices its preferred not to store content locally due to security reasons. However enabling this provides improved search and items retrieval for end users. So an  Encryption – either at the folder or the drive level is recommend.
3. After enabling this option on server side its recommended to limit the data on the machine side and not to download all the content since it requires disk space on the client.

Thanks & Regards 
Sathish Veerapandian