BEST PRACTICES ARCHIVE in contentaccess

Transcription

1 BEST PRACTICES ARCHIVE in contentaccess Use case: Archive configuration for companies with up to 2,000 mailboxes This section is intended to give an overview about how to configure archiving. Before you proceed to read the configuration part, we advise for you to read section Terms of use. Please keep in mind, that the names, configurations and units that we choose in this use case have an informative character only. What is contentaccess? contentaccess is an information management platform for migration, collaboration, access and transformation of data from different sources at any time, from any devices. USE CASE Goal: Company size: Exchange server: Mailbox to be archived: Message classes to be archived: Archiving method: contentaccess single server: contentaccess server externally accessible over: Storage: Database: Retention time: Scheduler: archiving of mailbox of TECH-ARROW up to 2,000 mailboxes O365 (to be configured within EWS Settings) Mails, Documents HTML shortcut tanews (to be configured within FQDN settings) single disk store single database 10 years provisioning job running daily from 5 PM till 6 PM; archive process running every day from 6 PM till 7 PM Monitoring: troubleshooting of potential system and job related misconfiguration Page 1/17

2 1. Install contentaccess (server, central administration and contentweb) on a single server (in our case tanews) and navigate to the central administration start page of the software (for more details refer to contentaccess Manual). Log in with the system user credentials. It is also recommended to install proxy server over HTTPS (secure) connection and to publish contentaccess Outlook forms in Ms Outlook (to ensure HTML shortcut transparency). Proxy server setup and Outlook forms are both accessible with navigating into Tools in the contentaccess setup package. Page 2/17

3 2. Navigate to System Services System, and under External accessibility settings enter Under External accessibility settings the externally accessible, fully qualified domain name (FQDN) must be filled in correctly, otherwise the links in the HTML shortcut will not work. If you have a Proxy over HTTP installed, then the domain name must be filled in here as HTTPS, too. In case that you use online exchange server, then the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) settings do not need to be filled in. In case that you archive from on premise exchange server, or you use Virtual Drive, and in all other cases the LDAP settings need to be filled in, too. For LDAP settings navigate to System Services System, and fill in Active directory integration settings. Page 3/17

4 3. Add a Tenant. Navigate to System Tenants Tenants (Screenshot A), click on + new and add TECH-ARROW (Screenshot B) & Tenant Admin for TA user into the system, then select the TECH-ARROW tenant that you created (Screenshot C). Screenshot A Screenshot B Screenshot C Add a new tenant & user (use existing or create new) into the system as it is shown on the screenshot A) above. The newly created tenant will appear in the right upper corner of the central administration user interface as on screenshot C). Select this tenant from the dropdown list. Page 4/17

5 4. Navigate to System Tenants All databases, click on + create new and fill in the Database repository window. Create a single SQL database to TECH- ARROW tenant with connection name Archive DB and Database user TA\Administrator. We will use the system database server (TANEWS), so tick the Use system database server (TANEWS) checkbox. Server name: enter the name of the database server here (in our case we use the system database server). Database: under this name will be created the database on SQL server Under Database user option: enter the credentials of an already existing user, or create a new user and password to it with clicking on the Generate user and password button. With this step contentaccess will generate a new user on MSSQL. This newly created user will have access permissions only to the currently created database. If you do not check the Use explicit user under Database user option, then a new user will not be created and the service user will be used to access the database. If you do not check the Use explicit user option, then the Generate user and password button will remain inactive. Use explicit credentials: if this checkbox is not checked then contentaccess will automatically connect to the database (MSSQL) under the contentaccess service account. If you tick the checkbox, then enter the login data of the subject who has the right to create a new database on the database server. Tenants: select a tenant from the dropdown (in our case TECH-ARROW) list to whom the database will belong to. Page 5/17

6 When creating databases, always consider the size of the company, and the number of mailboxes that will be archived. For bigger companies with a high number of mailboxes (more then 2,000) it is always recommended to create separate databases e.g. for the provisioning job, for the store and archive (or even for more exchange groups) also, to ensure transparency of processes. 5. Select TECH-ARROW tenant in the right hand menu of the central administration user interface, and navigate to the Archive tab on the ribbon. If you created a new tenant and navigated to the archive ribbon tab for the first time it will needed to activate Archiving with a click on Activate button. With this action a provisioning job will be automatically created. 6. Set the single Archive DB database as default. Navigate to Archive Settings Databases, select Archive DB, and click on the (ellipses) and select Set default from the dropdown list. Page 6/17

7 7. Perform system settings. Navigate to Archive Settings System settings ribbon button and fill in a) Archive DB under Database settings, b) Exchange Online (O365) under EWS settings and c) Exclude all message classes except of Mails and Documents. Important!!! The user that you set under Archive System settings EWS Settings, under User name must have a full access to the mailbox(es) that he/she would like to archive, and also must have View-Only Organization Management rights on exchange. It is important to bear in mind that the message class settings performed under Archive Settings System settings, under Exclude message classes will always have priority, nevertheless there will be another settings within an archiving job. a) Database settings. Here will be selected the database, which will be used by the provisioning job. The provisioning job will store here the metadata (mailbox permissions, group memberships, etc.) during the synchronization process. b) EWS Settings. Under Exchange server type and Exchange server interface version select the type and version of the Exchange server where your provider is running. Then enter the EWS URL, PowerShell URL and the PowerShell authentication. These data must be requested from the provider that you use. The maximum count of connection-attempts can be determined under Max. connection count option. It is also possible to disregard any SSL errors with checking the checkbox Ignore SSL errors. Enter the User name and Password for explicit credentials or log in under service-credentials and run a test connection via Test button. c) Exclude message classes. This feature can be quite useful for companies who have a policy, that certain message classes, e.g. Contacts, Tasks etc. mustn t be archived. Here you can also exclude custom message classes. E.g. if your company already has some s archived by a product from another company, then you can exclude Page 7/17

8 6. Adjust Retentions. Navigate to Archive Settings Retentions and configure the duration of storing of the archived item to 10 years. Click on + new, and fill in 10 years for retention name and the 120 for retention time into the Retention repository window. During the duration of this retention time the archived items will not be deleted from the selected storage. 7. Set 10 years as default retention. In the Archive Settings Retentions select retention 10 years, double click on ellipses ( ) and set this retention as default. This default retention is used by the Mail app, in case that the user would like to archive/restore mailbox items manually from the mailbox directly. 8. Configure an HTML shortcut. Navigate to Archive Settings Shortcut Configurations button and under HTML Templates click on + new to create a default HTML file. Name this HTML as Default (Screenshot A). Then click on + new option under the breadcrumbs and according to Screenshot B create an HTML shortcut, name it as Shortcut HTML. In the repository window select the Default HTML that you created a while ago. For truncate body fill in 200. Tick the options Change message class and Remove attachments. Type Green category into the Add category textbox. Screenshot A Screenshot B Page 8/17

9 With contentaccess the archived documents can be easily reopened/restored from the archive in case of need. This functionality can be achieved with the help of shortcuts. It is recommended to use HTML shortcut (with remove attachments and change message class option) instead of Normal shortcut. Normal shortcut works only in MS Outlook, the second condition is to have the contentaccess Outlook form installed in Outlook. The HTML shortcut will work with both, if the Change message class option is selected. On OWA or on mobile device you will see the HTML (which will contain a link to the archived attachment), and in MS Outlook it will open the (if the form is installed). The archived s will be marked with the category that you select under Add category option. If Remove attachments is ticked, then the attachments will be stored separately from the body of the message. The HTML Templates are free for editing. The size of a HTML-template cannot exceed 32 kb, from this reason, it is not recommended to use MS Word for editing HTML templates. 9. Set the Shortcut HTML as default. Navigate to Archive Settings Shortcut Configurations, select the Shortcut HTML, double click on the (ellipses) and click on Set default in the dropdown list. This default shortcut is used by the Mail app, in case that the user would like to archive/restore mailbox items manually from the mailbox directly. Page 9/17

10 10. Create the disk type store with name Archive store. Navigate to archive Settings Storages, here click on + new and fill the Storage repository window. For store name type Archive store, select the Disk type store and fill in the path: c:\diskstoreta\ archive. Tick Store metadata in DB and Compression textboxes. Under Database connection select single Archive DB that we created in Step 5 above. The location that you set here will be used to store your binaries. By the disk type storages the user can decide, if he wants to store the metadata in the database (checkbox Store metadata in DB ). With unchecking this field it is possible to spare even more database space, if these metadata are for the user redundant. If an explicit user will not be selected for this storage, then the contentaccess service user will be used automatically. 11. Select the Archive store storage, click on ellipsis and choose Set default from the dropdown list. 12. Configure 2 schedulers, one for the provisioning job, the second for the archive job. Navigate to Archive Settings Schedules, click on + new option create a Week schedule with repeat scheduler with name Every day at 6 PM, and with a frequency of running 60 minutes. Fix the start time of the archive job running in the week map, too (Screenshot A). Screenshot A archive job scheduler Page 10/17

11 For the provisioning scheduler, Navigate to Archive Settings Schedules again, click on + new option create a Week schedule with repeat scheduler with name Provisioning scheduler, and with a frequency of running 60 minutes. Fix the start time 5 PM of the provisioning running in the week map, too (Screenshot B). Screenshot B Provisioning job scheduler 13. Perform provisioning settings. Navigate to Archive Settings Provisioning settings. Configure the provisioning as follows: a) set the Provisioning scheduler from the list, b) under Notification settings choose Never from the dropdown list (monitoring job will be used to check potential system and job misconfigurations), and c) under Exchange servers click on + select and add Office 365 to the list. Important!!! Provisioning should be run before the Archive is configured. That is why we configured a daily scheduler from 5 PM to 6 PM for the provisioning job, and a daily scheduler from 6 PM till 7 PM for the archiving job. It is also a solution to start the provisioning job manually to ensure, that all the selected objects are synchronized into contentaccess. The provisioning job is a supplementary plugin to one or more archive jobs, which is intended to extract exchange groups and subgroups and synchronize these changes with contentaccess. If the whole exchange server is selected, as in our case, then it is redundant to select exchange groups for processing, as the groups are already involved in the selected exchange server. Under Notification settings you can also set where and when to send s about the potential errors, warnings that might occur during the running of the plugin. It is recommended to send these s when errors occur, but if you use the monitoring feature, then this step can be left out. Page 11/17

12 14. Set Archive DB database and Archive store storage for mailbox that you will archive. Navigate to archive Archive View the address book. Select mailbox click on ellipsis ( ), choose Assign database and storage from the dropdown. In the Mailbox configuration window select the archive DB and archive store. Now come on with creating the Archive job!!! 15. Creating a new Archiving job. A) Navigate to Archive Archive click on Jobs + new option. B) Enter the Display name (JohnBrown_ archive job) into the Add new job instance window, click on Add. C) Click on OK in the pop up window and configure the job instance. Page 12/17

13 D) Set Archive DB that we created in step 4 above. The metadata will be stored here. E) Select the Every day at 6 PM scheduler that we created in step 12 above. F) Select the Archive store storage that we configured in step 10 above. G) Select retention 10 years, which we configured in step 6. H) Within this step select the john.brown@tech-arrow.com mailbox, which will be archived. Click on + select option and tick this mailbox in the Mailbox selection window. I) Select the INBOX folder of john.brown@tech-arrow.com, which contents will be archived. For Folder filtering type select One single folder. Page 13/17

14 If there are any folders which you would not like to archive, you can exclude them from archiving under Exclude folder, with a click on + add folder2 and configuring them in the Exclude folder window. J) Item filtering. In Archive Settings System settings under Exclude message classes we have already configured, that only mails and documents need to be processed by the archiving job. Under Include folders we have selected whole INBOX to be archived. So there is no need to set filters in this step. It s worth to mention, that in case of need the archiving can be further limited with using 3 types of filters: Age filter, Size filter and Message class filter, but the filters set in Archive Settings System settings under Exclude message classes will always have priority. K) Under Notification settings select Never, as we will use the monitoring feature to check the details of possible system or job related failures. Although we do not use notification s for detecting possible failures, it is possible to set here, when you will need to get notifications from the Archive regarding the successfulness of running of the archive job. It is possible to set here, if you need a notification always/never, or, you need it only in case when an error/warning occurred during the archiving process (it is recommended to choose this option if notification is used). Into the Recipient list mailbox insert the addresses of the persons, to whom you would like to send these s. Page 14/17

15 L) Under Shortcut settings select Shortcut HTML, that we configured in step 8 above. M) Under processing settings select the Archive processing type from the dropdown list. It is always recommended to turn on the Split attachments function (by default it is turned on). N) Under resource settings set value 2. This value will determine how many items will be processed simultaneously by the archive plugin. 16. Save your changes!! After the configuration of a job instance it is still allowed to modify these configurations with navigating to Archive Archive Jobs, and a double click on the corresponding job. On this page you can also manually start/stop the running of the job. With enabling the auto refresh button the current state of running will be visible every 5 seconds. On the Progress bar you can check the status of the job. 17. Now we will check the JohnBrown_ archive job events, if everything has run properly. Navigate to System Services Monitoring. Under filtration, select Job event type, and select JohnBrown_archive job. Under Runs, select the running starting with 6 PM CET (according to our scheduler settings). Under Events you will see that in this case, mailbox processing information run successfully. Page 15/17

16 Just for illustrative purposes, we have intentionally set wrong user name under Archive Settings System settings, under section EWS Settings to show you, what happens if the system is not configured properly. We start to manually run the job, and the status pane will indicate, that the processing was not finished successfully. When we navigate to System Services Monitoring and filter the job out, we can check the reason of failure. The red crosses and the yellow warning signs will indicate any failures, which caused the problems in the archiving process. 18. And last but not least; when working with this great product, do not forget to enjoy it!:) Page 16/17

17 Terms of use Definition of terms: TAB, GROUP, BUTTON contentaccess Central Administration user interface is divided into tabs, groups and buttons. Each tab contains several groups, which also contain several buttons. When the reader of the manual encounters with a path containing 3 levels, e.g. Archive Settings Databases, then this path will navigate the user through the following levels: TAB GROUP BUTTON. Page 17/17