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Archiving and eDiscovery Community Blog

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What is a Placeholder?
Rob.Wilcox | 20 Jan 2013 | 0 comments

 

It is a term that many people in Enterprise Vault will know about.  It is used in Enterprise Vault File System Archiving, but even if you don't use FSA then you may still know what it is.  Essentially it's a 'shortcut' or stub which points to the archived file.  In order to process the retrieval of a placeholder then the Enterprise Vault placeholder service has to be involved.  If that isn't working, then retrieval of the item is going to fail.  It appears when you look at it in Windows Explorer to be exactly the same as the original file (except the little X in the icon), but it is in fact a special file which when an application opens the file (even notepad) forces Enterprise Vault to retrieve the original file.

 

Placeholders can be used when:

* The FSA Agent is installed on the file server (in the case of a Windows based file sever).  The volume...

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How to configure remote (but local) storage for EV VS Partition Data
Rob.Wilcox | 14 Jan 2013 | 0 comments

 

In many of the articles, videos, blogs and forum comments that I've done I have more than likely referred to my 'simple' Virtual Machine environments which I have used for the last 6 years both at Symantec and now outside of Symantec.  All the time the storage has been local storage.  A drive letter directly on the Enterprise Vault server.  Of course many people run environments like that out in the real world too, but many if not most won't run environments quite like that.  In this article I will explain how to configure Enterprise Vault to connect to storage which is remote, and to use it for storage of archived items.

 
Decide where your remote storage is going to be
 
.. not too far away.
.. EV will do a ping test when adding the storage.  Strictly speaking not the best test in the world, but it...
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How to search for items taking up lots of space in your archive
Rob.Wilcox | 12 Jan 2013 | 0 comments

 

Searching is something which I have covered in a few blog posts and articles before, but the other day when I was reading an article about how to find out which emails are taking up all your space in GMail, it suddenly struck me that the same sort of information would be useful to know about an Enterprise Vault mailbox archive.  In this post I’ll explain how to find out how big archives are, and how to find out the items taking up most space.

 

Launch Advanced Browser Search

Many people will be familiar with integrated search of Enterprise Vault from inside Outlook.  Some people may also know about Browser Search.  You can extend browser search by using Advanced Browser Search.  To do this amend the URL that you go to, as follows:
 
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2013 - A Look Forward
Rob.Wilcox | 06 Jan 2013 | 0 comments

 

I was thinking the other day, whilst waiting for Santa Claus, of all the things that I'd like to see or do in 2013.  The main things are:

 

  • The next Enterprise Vault 10.0.3 Service Pack - there are some little hints here and there on the Symantec Connect Forums of what it might contain, and I hope it is as good as it 'sounds' from the things that have been written.
  • More work from awesome companies like QUADROtech and Adept-tec and others.
  • BBQ's on the beach (and I've purchases a handful of disposable BBQ's to try out :))
  • More happiness

 

The last one is something that I don't often...

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2012 - A Look Back
Rob.Wilcox | 01 Jan 2013 | 0 comments

 

2012 brought with it a sea of changes in the Enterprise Vault world.  A number of new releases, like:

  • Enterprise Vault 9.0.4 - swiftly followed by an R1, and then two cumulative updates
  • Enterprise Vault 10.0.2 - and a cumulative update to that too

At last in Enterprise Vault 10.0.2 came the Exchange Mailbox Archiving Report - and it doesn't disappoint - it is an invaluable tool for seeing what has been processed in an archiving run.  I hope that other archiving targets adopt the same sort of reporting standard as this sets a new high-bar.

2012 also brought a sea of change to my life. I asked for voluntary redundancy from the Enterprise Vault Customer Focus Team when redundancies were announced around the mid-year mark. I almost worked for bluesource in London, well, actually I did, but at around the same time we as a family decided to get away from it all...

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Conversation View and Outlook Web App 2010
Rob.Wilcox | 31 Dec 2012 | 0 comments

One of the great things about Enterprise Vault is its integration in to Outlook, and Outlook Web App (formerly Outlook Web Access).  There is a small annoyance with Outlook Web App 2010 though, related to conversation view.  Here is what I mean:

The above image shows a normal looking part of the Inbox. It all looks 'very nice'.  The item I have highlighted is a single message, and when I right click on it, I see:

You can see from the above image that the Enterprise Vault Outlook Web App extensions have added the 'Archive' option to the menu and that allows me to send that item to Enterprise Vault for archiving.  Now have a look at this highlighted item:

...

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Enterprise Vault 9.0.4 Cumulative Hotfix 2 Released
Rob.Wilcox | 23 Dec 2012 | 0 comments

 

I just spotted this on the RSS feed, and thought I would share:

Enterprise Vault 9.0.4 cumulative hotfix 2 release

I must admit I haven't played with Enterprise Vault 9.0.4 in a little while now, but it is good to see updates still being released for it.

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Manually Archiving an Item when Vault Cache is involved
Rob.Wilcox | 17 Dec 2012 | 1 comment

 

Enterprise Vault has a very cool way of handling what happens when an item is manually archived, from an end-user operation, when they have Vault Cache already configured.  The way it proceeds is as follows:-
 
* User clicks on 'Store in Vault'
* Enterprise Vault Outlook Add-in marks the item as pendingarchive.
* The Add-in sends a HTTP request to the EV server to process the archiving of the item
* The Add-in stores the item in the appropriate .db file in the content cache
 
This way the item doesn't need to be downloaded during the next synchronisation run since it has already been added to Vault Cache.  It saves a round trip to the server for each time this operation is performed.  It's quite cool.
 
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December SharePoint Governance Twitter Chat
Swathi Turlapaty | 13 Dec 2012 | 0 comments

Join hashtag #IGChat and learn about SharePoint governance and creating effective governance plans

Over the years, SharePoint has become a favorite among organizations as a place to share and manage content. As SharePoint adoption increases – storage, performance and on-going maintenance become major challenges, and SharePoint governance becomes essential. Archiving and eDiscovery solutions provide a key part in any effective and lasting governance strategy for SharePoint.  

In a 2012 survey conducted by Osterman research, the results showed that 39 percent of all SharePoint implementations still don’t have a governance plan. This is due to the fact that implementing governance plans can be difficult.

During this Twitter Chat we will discuss the reasons why organizations need SharePoint governance and the role of archiving and eDiscovery in governance plans. Please join Symantec’s archiving/eDiscovery and SharePoint experts...

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Events logged for collections
Rob.Wilcox | 13 Dec 2012 | 1 comment

 

One of the things that people sometimes consider doing on their Enterprise Vault environment is to enable collections.  Regular, plain, simple NTFS Collections, done by Enterprise Vault.  What this does is collect together some of the files that Enterprise Vault has generated when archiving items, and put them in to a CAB file.
 
This has the advantage that backups can be sped up somewhat because the many, many small files are now much fewer, larger files.. and backup software likes things like that.
 
When enabling collections, and running them, these are the sort of events that you can see logged in the event log:
 
Information     28/11/2012 16:09:56     Enterprise Vault      6854     Storage File Watch
 
Log Name:      Symantec Enterprise Vault

Source:        Enterprise Vault

Date:          28/11/...
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