Hi
I’m after some thoughts on an issue that’s developed during an EV upgrade. In summary all the users who’s archives reside on a particular EV server are now no longer able to store or recall archived items.
I’ll explain the background:
The environment consists of two sites each with a single EV 8.0.1 server each of which does Exchange mailbox archiving only – the Exchange environment is Exchange 2003 SP2 and there is a mailbox server on each site. Each Exchange server is archived into its own Vault Store Group which has just a single Mailbox Vault Store within it. There are about 150 users per site and there is no journal archives on either site
Also each EV server has a local copy of SQL 2000 installed which host the EV databases. The EV server on site 1 (EVServer01) hosts the Directory Database, Monitoring Database its local VSG fingerprint database and local Vault store database. The SQL2000 server residing on the EV server on site 2 (EVServer02) hosts just it’s local fingerprint and Vault Store databases.
The task is to upgrade this environment to EV10.0.4 and move the databases to local dedicated SQL 2012 servers.
We elected on installing a dedicated SQL2008 SP2 server at site 2 and move all the databases to this server as SQL2008 SP2 is supported on EV8, EV9 and EV10 and would allow us to upgrade EV without the need to keeping SQL server in step. First we had to go to patch to EV8.0.5 as 8.0.1 isn’t supported on SQL2008.
So EV8.0.1 -> EV8.0.5 completed upgrade was fine with no errors
Then move all databases from both sites to SQL2008 SP2 server on site B – again completed with no errors (old SQL2000 DB’s were backed up first)
Next EV8.0.5 -> EV9.0.5 upgrade completed upgrade was fine no errors (but I must admit the testing here could have been more thorough – I can’t definitely say we tested BOTH EVservers would access their archives…. We tested the server on site 2 and my colleague (thinks) he tested several users on Site 1…. Certainly no users complained they couldn’t get to their archives.
Next we built 2 x Wn2K8 R2 servers to host the EV10 environment and used the migration wizard to upgrade from EV9.0.5 to EV10.0.4. We followed the migration wizard technote to the letter, preventing user access, creating the migration package and copied the Archives and Indexes to the same volume drive letters and paths on the new servers and changed the DNS alias.
Again the upgrade went without a hitch and the migration import was green ticks all the way.
So then we noticed the problem – users at Site 1 could not recall archived items whereas users on site 2 were all fine. The outlook add-ins had mostly all been upgraded to EV9 prior to any of this work taking place.
The error manifested itself in a number of ways depending on how the item was trying to be recalled. From an outlook perspective the user would be asked for credentials when they double clicked an item and when the DOMAIN\username was supplied the credentials were asked for again and again. From EV Search it was possible to search no problem but when an item was opened again the credentials were requested constantly. From Archive Explorer a browse would return all the expected results but when an item was tried to be restored an error saying the item could not be retrieved from the storage service appeared.
Also attempts to ‘Store’ just result in the email icon changing to pending and then returning to the IPM.Note state.
I’ve worked through many technotes including http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH56220
about checking IE settings, IIS authentication, folder permissions for WebApp and Enterprise Vault directories, SPN’s and nothing has worked. Our main troubleshooting approach has been to compare the two EV servers as one is perfect and the other can’t access any archives. Both servers are identical in configuration and credentials/permissions.
Below is a link that almost nails the exact problem
http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH216779
I get the same Event Viewer error ID but the reason I get is “unspecified Error” however I did run a DTrace on EVSVR for a saveset dump but have yet to fully review it. It did start me thinking about the moving of the databases I did from Site 1 to Site 2. The EV server that is no longer working is the site that has had the DBs moved offsite to Site 2…… could there be some comm’s issue that’s causing this – Deployment Scanner had no issue and all the upgrades went well, plus it can connect to the Directory DB fine……
So I’m hoping for a few thoughts….. :o)
Is there a way I can confirm if I have a corrupt fingerprint database for the affected VSG? Perhaps a SQL query I can run or something with EVSVR? I’m really just looking to localise the issue to either that EVServer, the SQL server or perhaps IIS……
Any pointers appreciated.
More than happy to supply any more details as requested
Many thanks to those who managed to read the whole post :o)