Using the VSS snapshot wizards with Enterprise Vault

SFW provides support for taking snapshots of Enterprise Vault components. FlashSnap integrates with the Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) to allow snapshots to be taken of all volumes that are associated with a Enterprise Vault component without taking the component's databases offline. The Enterprise Vault Snapshot wizard uses VSS to take snapshots of components. The VSS process allows the component's databases to be quiesced before the snapshot operation and reactivates them immediately after. The quiescing at the component level allows for supported and guaranteed persistent snapshots of the data. A snapshot of a component can be reattached and resynchronized to match the current state of the component with the Enterprise Vault Snapback wizard. SFW also provides recovery support for Enterprise Vault components. Using the Enterprise Vault Restore Wizard, the snapshots that are taken with the Enterprise Vault Snapshot wizard can be used for a recovery of the component.

The following describes the Enterprise Vault components that SFW supports.

Directory database

The Enterprise Vault Directory database holds configuration information for each site in the Directory (EnterpriseVaultDirectory).

Monitoring database

Enterprise Vault has a Monitoring agent on each Enterprise Vault server. The Monitoring agents collect monitoring data at scheduled intervals, usually every few minutes, and store it in the Enterprise Vault Monitoring database. If multiple Enterprise Vault sites share a Directory database, then they must also share a Monitoring database (EnterpriseVaultMonitoring).

Reporting database

The Reporting database stores reporting information that is generated from the collected Monitoring data. There is one Reporting database named EnterpriseVaultFSAReporting corresponding to the Directory Database.

Auditing database

The Auditing database stores audit information. There is one Auditing database named EnterpriseVaultAudit corresponding to the Directory database

Site

A site comprises one or more Enterprise Vault servers running one or more Enterprise Vault services and tasks to archive items from specified targets. A site also contains a collection of vault stores, archiving policies that define how and when items are to be archived, and Retention Categories that define how long items are to be stored before being deleted.

Index

The Indexing Service indexes items as they are archived. There is one Index for each archive

Vault Store Group

A Vault Store Group (VSG) is a collection of Vault Stores that are configured to share data.

Fingerprint database

A Vault Store Group contains one or more Fingerprint Catalog databases (FDB) to hold a shared item's metadata.

Vault Store

Enterprise Vault organizes archives in entities called Vault Stores. Vault Stores contain one or more Enterprise Vault Partitions. A Partition can reside on any of the supported storage media.

Vault Store database

The Vault Store SQL databases contain information about every archive operation processed for all archives within a Vault Store. Both the Vault Store's database and the Vault Store's files must be complete to be able to retrieve messages from an archive.

Open Partition

In each Vault Store, there can be only one Open Partition. This is the Partition in which Enterprise Vault archives data. An Open Partition is the current active Partition in which Enterprise Vault data is being written.

Ready Partition

Each Vault Store can have a number of Ready Partitions. A Ready Partition is the next available partition to be used.

Closed Partition

Each Vault Store can have any number of Closed Vault Store Partitions. Enterprise Vault does not archive content into Partitions that are closed.