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November 5th, 2008 06:00
The whole deletion process; From Exchange, EX, DX and Centera
Hello. I created a service request for this as well but it's always good to ask other EMC customers as well. The General question here is how do we do a complete deletion of old email focusing on the need to free up space on a Centera.
This question requires knowledge from all three areas of EmailXtender, DiskXtender and Centera. I appreciate some assistance.
We Currently are using EX 4.81.655, DX 6.3, and Centera at version 4.x.
We have not deleted any archived mail from the Centera, and we have not deleted any shortcuts in user mailboxes.
We want to plan the following:
1. Remove shortcuts older than 84 months from mailboxes using an EX deletion task.
2. Remove data from Centera that is older than 84 months.
Our primary goal is to free up disk space on the Centera by removing old email data, but making sure our employees do not encounter errors by trying to access this data through shortcuts or EXsearch.
We would like to know:
A. Is there any type of link between the Deletion Task in EX and DX or the Centera? In other words, when we remove the shortcuts from user mailboxes, if there are no longer any owners of an item in the Centera, is the space somehow reclaimed? If so, how?
If the above question is not as simple, please help explain how we can properly remove data from the Centera. We have certain details on how to do this, but pieces are missing. For example, we can remove the EX indexes for older volumes; does that action invoke deletion of any mail? If not, how do we instruct DX to not keep the old information any more, which then in turn would mark the data on the Centera as reclaimable, then would a garbage collection task reclaim the space?
Thank you in advance for any assistance.
This question requires knowledge from all three areas of EmailXtender, DiskXtender and Centera. I appreciate some assistance.
We Currently are using EX 4.81.655, DX 6.3, and Centera at version 4.x.
We have not deleted any archived mail from the Centera, and we have not deleted any shortcuts in user mailboxes.
We want to plan the following:
1. Remove shortcuts older than 84 months from mailboxes using an EX deletion task.
2. Remove data from Centera that is older than 84 months.
Our primary goal is to free up disk space on the Centera by removing old email data, but making sure our employees do not encounter errors by trying to access this data through shortcuts or EXsearch.
We would like to know:
A. Is there any type of link between the Deletion Task in EX and DX or the Centera? In other words, when we remove the shortcuts from user mailboxes, if there are no longer any owners of an item in the Centera, is the space somehow reclaimed? If so, how?
If the above question is not as simple, please help explain how we can properly remove data from the Centera. We have certain details on how to do this, but pieces are missing. For example, we can remove the EX indexes for older volumes; does that action invoke deletion of any mail? If not, how do we instruct DX to not keep the old information any more, which then in turn would mark the data on the Centera as reclaimable, then would a garbage collection task reclaim the space?
Thank you in advance for any assistance.
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jskoecher
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November 5th, 2008 08:00
from what I hear, you do have a disk space problem with your Centera. Okay, do you have any retention on the containers you move to the Centera? This retention is usually defined in EmailXtender, but you could have defined those in DX and on the Centera too. If you have retention enabled at any point, you cannot delete emails off the centera...
- When just deleting older indexes, you'll keep the mail, you'll keep the shortcuts, but the search will not show/point to the emails that might still exist.
- When just deleting shortcuts older than 84 monts, the information stays in the Index and on the Centera.
- You'll need to first remove the old shortcuts (using the deletion as you've mentioned), remove the old volumes (from within EX Administrator), so the index and the email information is deleted - at least for EX.
And now, that's the point where I haven't done this and would encourage other forum participants to help out here.
- I think when deleting a container from within EX, this container is then also deleted from the drive if no retention is set. So, my guess would be that also DX deletes this and instructs Centera to delete this.
- More guesswork: Centera should be able to overwrite this information. I know there are other Centera commands to free up the space...
Have you posted your question also in the Centera section?
Hope this helps somehow!
Kind regards, Jochen.
Wisers
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138 Posts
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November 5th, 2008 10:00
EX uses SQL DB to cross reference mail items; checking for duplicates, and adding / removing ownership.
When you perform a deletion, and say an email has no more owners and is going to be removed from the Centera, does EX actually clean up the SQL DB, or does it leave it.
Wisers
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138 Posts
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November 5th, 2008 10:00
Not so much a problem with disk space on Centera, but we do know we are storing information we may not need.
Retention:
For EX, retention is set to "0"
For DX, retention is set to 30 days. It is my understanding that after 30 days the data is not protected from any delete actions we perform, correct?
Thanks for the EX information.
Regarding the Centera portion where you have not done this, What you say sounds probable. The Centera command could be what is called "garbage collection", but I'm not totally sure.
I did not post this question in the Centera section yet, because i didn't want to have two postings asking the same question, but I will go there and reference this thread.
It would be great to be able to cross post, because many solutions end up being an EX/DX/Storage answer.
Thanks Jochen, I will be sure to post everything I find here.
jskoecher
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204 Posts
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November 5th, 2008 10:00
Sure, users do receive and therefore you store irrelevant information. I am dealing with companies, where the deletion after 7 years would pose a problem (only because email has become a sensitive issue and nobody wants anything deleted).
Yes, if your retention is 30days, after that time Centera is not going prevent deletion.
In connection with the Centerea clean-up process, I was told this is "garbage collection". Once you've mentioned it, it dawned on me. As I am not "certified" on Centera, I am not allowed to touch these with my clients. But if they do it themselves... you know what I mean.
When you delete something in EX, the SQL database is going to be updated. Just verify with "Health Check", where you can show if a messageID is in the SQL database or not (before and after the deletion). You'll see that it's going to be deleted.
I have always found that you'll find people dealing only with EX, DX or Centera, but very few know how things work together!
Hope this helps and things are clearer for you.
Kind regards, Jochen.
Wisers
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138 Posts
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November 6th, 2008 07:00
Our business doesn't REQUIRE keeping messages for ever, but yes it is a hard discussion to have when we try to implement this. The other side of the coin is, since we are not regulated by any law to keep our data, sometimes it is NOT good to keep all your own information; it is easier to say "we don't have it".
So here is the process to remove information from EX, DX and the Centera. For us at least:
EX
1. On Email Extender in View Month mode, right click the month you want to remove and choose "Remove Monthly Index".
2. Right click again and choose "Dispose Monthly Data".
DX
1. EmailXtender automatically creates media groups that match the ones seen in EXAdmin. Under Media Groups locate MG with the same name. Do not delete it yet.
2. Navigate using windows explorer to the folder on the container volume, that contains the .emx files for this media group. Delete them. For us, when these offline files (stubs) are deleted, since we have only a 30 day retention on the files, they will be removed from the centera in the next DX background scan.
3. Go back to DXAdmin and perform a compact task. Since the emx files are gone, this will not bring back any information, but it is necessary for the administration of the Media group.
4. You can now delete the media group from DXAdmin.
I'm open to any comments on the above. It came from a DX EMC case request for information.
Message was edited by:
Wisers
jskoecher
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204 Posts
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November 6th, 2008 09:00
that pretty much sums it up; and well documented!
Keep well, Jochen.
jskoecher
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204 Posts
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November 6th, 2008 09:00
But this is rather minor... and rather for your clarification.
Wisers
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138 Posts
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November 19th, 2008 11:00
I wanted to insert something into my 4 step process above. We want to free up space on the Centera so before removing the Media folder from DX, we perform a format task. This will mark the data on the Centera as disposable, and the next time Centera Garbage collection runs, it will free up the space.
Ytsejamer1_ef7a41
30 Posts
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December 5th, 2008 06:00
"Our business doesn't REQUIRE keeping messages for ever, but yes it is a hard discussion to have when we try to implement this. The other side of the coin is, since we are not regulated by any law to keep our data, sometimes it is NOT good to keep all your own information; it is easier to say "we don't have it". "
If it's good enough for the White House, it's good enough for me!!!
We too keep everything even though we're not under any obligation to do so. But I do have a separate archive folder for spam. I clear those out after three months. I just right click on the monthly volume and choose 'Dispose Monthly Data". After that I parse the registry and get the list of indexes/whatever that have to be deleted that are found in the Lost and Found. I then delete those from the index drive and they clear out of the Lost and Found over time.
I do this manually once a month to purge spam. Our email index drive is up to 300GB used. Usually under full spambot activity, we'd have about 25-30GB of spam per month. In November however, our spam archive was "only" 11GB. But I like to reclaim this space as we certainly don't want to hold onto this spam. Keeping it for three months allows users to go back and find emails that may have been accidentally tagged as spam.