How to disable or zap ALL mailboxes with Enterprise Vault EVPM

April 9, 2013

I recently performed a hybrid migration from Exchange (2003) on-premise to Office

365. The client used Symantec Enterprise Vault in their UK office.

Before mailboxes could be migrated I had to remove all traces of Enterprise Vault. If
youre familiar with Enterprise Vault then youll know how easy it is to migrate data
back to original mailbox or PST file. Logistically it could be a nightmare, and it will
take ages, but technically its all catered for quite nicely in the VAC (Vault Admin
Console). What isnt covered is how to globally zap all mailboxes.

As you may or may not know, you can use the ALL_MAILBOX parameter with EVPM
to configure archive permissions:

[ArchivePermissions]
ArchiveName = ALL_MAILBOX

Unfortunately this isnt supported when enabling or disabling mailboxes!

So first off you need to export a list of all archives you want to disable/zap. Your
EVPM input file works on DistinguishedName, which is the Active Directory
LegacyExchangeDN attribute. You can run your Enterprise Vault mailbox archive
task(s) in report mode to extract a list of all DNs in tab-separated format.

Use the archive task reports to populate the DistinguishedName attributes in two
EVPM ini files. Save the files on the EV Server in Unicode format as
c:\temp\evpm_disable_all.ini and c:\temp\evpm_zap_all.ini. The files should be
created as follows:

EVPM script to disable a mailbox (save as c:\temp\evpm_disable_all.ini on EV

Server):

[Directory]
DirectoryComputername = EvServer.domain.local
SiteName = EvSite

[Mailbox]
DistinguishedName = /o=demo/ou=test/cn=Recipients/cn=testuser1
DistinguishedName = /o=demo/ou=test/cn=Recipients/cn=testuser2
DistinguishedName = /o=demo/ou=test/cn=Recipients/cn=testuser3

[Folder]
Name = Mailboxroot
Enabled = False

EVPM script to zap a mailbox (save as c:\temp\evpm_zap_all.ini on EV Server):

[Directory]
DirectoryComputername = EvServer.domain.local
SiteName = EvSite

[Mailbox]
DistinguishedName = /o=demo/ou=test/cn=Recipients/cn=testuser1
DistinguishedName = /o=demo/ou=test/cn=Recipients/cn=testuser2
DistinguishedName = /o=demo/ou=test/cn=Recipients/cn=testuser3

[Folder]
Name = Mailboxroot
Zap = True

You can now run EVPM using the input files from the previous step. Remember that
EVPM uses the system mailbox, not the VSA! Use the following syntax:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Enterprise Vault\evpm.exe" -e {Exchange Server} -m

{System Mailbox} -f C:\Temp\{ini_file}.ini
For example:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Enterprise Vault\evpm.exe" -e ExchSvr1 -m EvSysExchSvr1 -f

C:\Temp\evpm_disable_all.ini
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Enterprise Vault\evpm.exe" -e ExchSvr1 -m EvSysExchSvr1 -f
C:\Temp\evpm_zap_all.ini