Overview:

The Enterprise Vault Collector is a piece of file management software which is responsible for:

Collecting files

Vault store partitions that are hosted on an NTFS storage location, organise the storage of saveset files based on the sent/received date of the item archived by Enterprise Vault. This means that the saveset files are organised across a hierarchy of folders rather than into one single folder.


The Enterprise Vault Collector focuses on the DAY directory of this structure and uses configurable rules to package the saveset files below the day directory into collection files. These collections are themselves CAB files.


Once the Enterprise Vault Collector has been enabled for an NTFS vault store partition, the collector runs once per day, everyday at a configured time. On the properties of the partition the run times are configured by setting the following options:

On the properties of the partition it is also possible to do a ‘Run Now’ of the Enterprise Vault Collector. When this is done Enterprise Vault will stop collecting when there are no more files to collect. This means a ‘Run Now’ of the collector could run for any length of time, depending on the number of files eligible for collection.

1.The collector looks at the created date of each day directory and compares this to the current date on the local system to determine whether that directory possibly contains files old enough for collection.

If the difference is greater than the “Age at which files will be collected” setting for the partition, this indicates to the collector that saveset files under the day directory could be eligible for collection and so it then continues to check the modified dates on the saveset files in this directory.

2.If the above check on the day directory is successful, the collector then looks at the modified date on each saveset file to decide if the file is eligible for collection. This date is compared to the current date on the local system to determine whether that directory possibly contains files old enough for collection.

If the difference is greater than the ‘Collect files older than’ setting for the partition, this indicates to the collector that saveset files are eligible for collection.

3.The collector now takes the eligible files and combines them into a collection (CAB) file which is placed in the day directory. The collection of the saveset files is done based on the following rules:

If when creating a collection, the collector hits one of these limits, the collection rolls over into another collection (CAB) file. This means it is possible for multiple collection (CAB) files to be created in one day directory.

Collection files are named ‘Collection#.CAB’, where # is an incremented numerical identifier for each collection file within a partition.