Enterprise Vault Archive Migrations

EAS archives are moved in one step, directly into Enterprise Vault.

There’s no need for interim disk space or need to convert into interim formats (such as PST or EML files) during migration.  This saves both cost and time.  It also preserves chain-of-custody as your data is moved.

Transvault moves data into your EV environment using a connector which uses the approved Enterprise Vault API.  In fact Transvault was the first migration solution to be approved under the Symantec Technology Enabled Program (STEP).  This ensures 100% reliability for your move.

Transvault provides a comprehensive shortcut management service that ensures users have a seamless experience when they migrate.

EAS shortcuts (aka stubs) are converted into EV shortcuts ‘on the fly’.

This activity can take place whilst users are online – there’s no need for any downtime or for users to logout.

Another key feature designed to ensure a great user experience is that Transvault synchronizes with the current status of users’ shortcuts as they exist in their mailbox at the time of the migration.

For example, where users have re-foldered their shortcuts ‘post-archiving’, Transvault ensures the corresponding items end up in the right folders post-migration.

Similarly, where users have deleted their shortcuts, you can configure Transvault not to migrate the corresponding item, as this is confusing and causes concern for end users when deleted items reappear.

Yes.  You can move EAS journal archives into EV journal archives.  To do this Transvault reconstructs EAS journals into the format required by EV.

It also offers many other capabilities that will ease your move, including the ability to split journals (and other large mailboxes) into a number of separately handled virtual mailboxes of a user-defined size.  This allows multiple processing threads to be applied to the migration of a single journal mailbox, significantly speeding up the migration task.

You also get full chain-of-custody and detailed audit tracks as your data is moved, enabling you to satisfy the most demanding compliance needs.

Migration speeds into EV from archives such as EAS have been measured in excess of 2TB a day.

As well as running multiple threads on a single server and across single mailboxes, multiple Transvault servers can be configured to operate in parallel and:

• Extract from multiple mailboxes and multiple vaults at once from your EAS environment
• Migrate to many EV archive mailboxes simultaneously
• Process large archive mailboxes (such as journal and Public Folder archives) with multiple tasks

Note, however, that achieving best performance is dependent on many factors such as:

• Available network bandwidth
• Loading on the legacy email archive
• The speed of the storage subsystem on which the legacy archive sits
• How busy your EV servers are

Your chosen archive migration partner can establish a proof of concept (POC) to establish likely throughput rates in your specific environment.

Transvault has connectors that link directly into your AXS-One archive store and Enterprise Vault stores.

In fact, Transvault was the first solution in the market to have its archive connectors certified by Symantec (now Veritas) under the STEP program.

Using these connections your email records are moved in one transaction, ensuring optimum speed and reliability for your move.

Yes.  Transvault offers migration and conversion capability between Exchange and Notes archives. E.g.

An organization using AXS-One for Notes can migrate their contents to say, Enterprise Vault for Exchange or Office 365, using Transvault to perform the migration along with on-the-fly email format conversion.

In most cases, Transvault can convert shortcuts so they work with the new archive system.

Where necessary, Transvault can re-write internal email addresses so that legacy emails can be successfully replied to.  This is useful in the event of a merger or other scenario where the email address may have changed.

Transvault also includes the ability to decrypt Notes emails where passwords can be made available.

Additionally organizations can actually reduce the time it takes to migrate their ‘live’ email system between Exchange and Notes by taking advantage of migrating their archives first, as this can be done in a way that does not impact end users.  In fact some organizations ramp up their archiving so that they can minimize the size of the live mailboxes that need to be migrated as a ‘foreground’ exercise.

Benchmark testing has further shown that Transvault has superior conversion performance and message format fidelity when compared with leading third-party mailbox migration applications.

As your data is moved, Transvault carries out a series of integrity checks to ensure your email records will be viable post-migration.  Any items that fail to migrate are automatically re-processed a specified number of times and/or at a different time of day.

Failures to migrate an item may be temporary, owing to environmental issues such as poor network bandwidth or high loading on the legacy archive.

‘Permanent’ failures tend to be low – typically .001% of the overall email quantity.  They are usually attributable to pre-existing problems in the source archive (i.e. not caused by the migration process).  As such, it is likely that these items would NOT have been picked up by any audit or eDiscovery exercise.   

In the event of a permanent failure, a full log of the item(s) in question is produced to enable investigation.  You can attempt a manual retrieval of any failed messages directly from the log, a feature which massively reduces troubleshooting overheads.

If your organization requires further investigative work to be carried out on failed items, data remediation services are available to help and where possible, fix the problem to the satisfaction of your legal team.

For example, in one project it was discovered that some emails only had the email ‘shell’ intact – the actual body of the email and any attachments were missing. The customer’s legal team requested for all the retrievable header data (i.e. Subject, To, From, Date) to be preserved and migrated along with explanatory text into the email body to explain to a future eDiscovery operator that the original message was broken prior to the migration. Transvault’s remediation service was able to meet this request.

NB – If your organization requires further investigative work and data remediation to be carried out in the event of a corrupted item, this should be discussed with your chosen Transvault service provider in advance.

Developed under the Symantec Technology Enabled Program (STEP), Transvault has connectors that move data directly into or out of Enterprise Vault using the EV approved API.

We recommend using the API wherever possible, as this is the only route that is fully supported by Veritas.

However, Transvault also offers the option of a direct connector into Enterprise Vault.  This is useful where you need to:

• Extract data from a version of EV that is pre version 7.5 (as there was no published API at this time)
• Access data where the EV server itself is non-operational
• Work with an archive service that is heavily loaded (the direct approach avoids impact on end users).

Where high speed is a vital component to your migration, a direct approach can also perform up to 10x faster than using the API.

Where project timelines and operational issues dictate, customers now have the option of using Transvault’s unique hybrid connector, which combines speed with safety:  if an item can’t be accessed using a direct connection, Transvault automatically switches to using the API connector.

For example, not all of the data stored in your EV implementation may be accessible using a direct approach.  This can be the case where data is held on a range of hierarchical storage devices and services (such as Amazon, Rackspace, Dell and Hitachi) that rely on using the EV Streamer API to act as a ‘go-between’.

Ultimately, if your migration needs to meet Veritas recommendations, you can use the API exclusively – the great thing is that Transvault gives you the choice, which is also totally unique.

The first migration solution to be certified for use with Enterprise Vault, and available from global network of Transvault Certified Migration Masters, including Veritas Partners and Veritas Consulting Services, Transvault quickly and securely migrates legacy archived email into, out of, and around the Enterprise Vault (EV) platform.

Example migration scenarios include:

• Moving from an ‘unsatisfactory’ or obsolete archive into EV (virtually all third-party email archives and common email formats, including PST, EML, MSG and NSF files, are supported)
• EV upgrades – using Transvault you can migrate EV versions as early as V5 to the latest release
• EV storage moves to protect against obsolescence and lock-in (e.g. extraction from EMC Centera)
• Standardization onto EV (e.g. where merging organizations have incompatible systems)
• Staff relocations between different archive stores (vaults)
• A move to hosted solution (e.g. Enterprise Vault.cloud or Microsoft Office 365)
• Conversion of an EV for Lotus Notes archive to an EV for Exchange archive (and vice versa)

All data movement is fully audited to ensure chain-of-custody, and mailbox shortcuts are fully managed to ensure a seamless experience for end users as they move.   

Yes.  Although with Enterprise Vault V8 SP4 the Move Archive tool was introduced to enable storage upgrades or moves, this utility is only suitable for moving smaller amounts of data such as individual mailboxes.

Using Transvault you can initially profile your existing archive usage – e.g. how much storage is being used, how many archive stores there are, the average mailbox size, total number of items etc.

You can then be selective in what you migrate and to where.  E.g. you might want to migrate a department of users at a time to a specific new archive store or re-group users according to archive storage consumption.

Compliance regulations permitting, it’s also possible to:

• Move just the last n years-worth of data,
• Move only the data that users still have shortcuts to,
• Not move emails that have [SPAM] in the subject, etc

Transvault can also be used to quickly move old vaults into the newer EV OSIS architecture, resulting in great storage benefits.  

You might also want to move from a single EV server to a failover cluster or move your data from legacy storage, such as EMC Centera, to a new storage platform.

Transvault can be used to consolidate vaults belonging to different organizations and domains.  This includes the ability to re-write internal email addresses (where permissible) such that retrieved emails can be replied to without having to edit the email address manually.

Migrator can filter items by user, groups, folders and dates, thus enabling data to be incisively migrated.

Transvault can also re-write internal email addresses in sender and recipient fields so that the email is usable with any new domain naming or recipient-addressing conventions.

EV has it own Wizards that enable data to be extracted and imported to/from PST files.

Issues specifically associated with using ‘native’ EV migration tools include:

• It’s slow – This is a single-threaded process which is intended for simple mailbox moves.  It is not intended for wholesale migrations.  It is also just half of the migration exercise – see notes below.
• It’s manually intensive – The native tool needs to be manually overseen (i.e. you could not batch several mailboxes to migrate unattended overnight).
• There’s no error logging – If a mailbox extraction fails owing to a corrupted email, the extraction will stop with no indication of which item was corrupted and no ability to pick up where you left off.
• Lacks flexibility – There is no support for migrating BCC’d and distribution list recipients from journal archives, no ability to re-write addresses, etc.
• There’s no auditing and minimal reporting. 
• No shortcut awareness – The EV Wizard does not have awareness of which items have shortcuts.  This means if you export data, it will be everything in the archive, which will mean users are presented with data they believe was deleted years ago.  So not only do you have a storage space issue, you have user issues as well.  Likewise shortcuts in user’s mailboxes will not be converted or re-hydrated as the corresponding items are migrated.