Once you have configured File System Archiving, Enterprise Vault archives files according to the schedule for each task. Enterprise Vault selects files that meet the criteria you have defined in the archiving rules.

Enterprise Vault automatically creates an archive for each Archive Point and then selects and stores files according to the rules. The files are then replaced with shortcuts, or deleted, according to the policy setting.

Depending on the safety copy settings in the vault store properties, the original files may remain in place until the vault store has been backed up and then be replaced with shortcuts.

Figure: File System Archiving process example shows the Enterprise Vault components involved when archiving files from a file server.

In this example, placeholder shortcuts are being used on an NTFS file system, so the Placeholder Service (part of the FSA Agent) is installed on the file server. Two Archive Points have been created on the file server to mark the top of the folder structures to be archived. Two archives will be created, one for each Archive Point.

On the Enterprise Vault server, a volume policy defines what files are to be archived. The File System Archiving Task runs under the control of the Task Controller Service according to the task schedule.

When a file is archived, the Enterprise Vault Storage Service converts the file to HTML, if possible, and stores the file in the archive. Using the HTML, the Indexing Service indexes the details and content of the file, so that users can later search for the file.

If many of items are being archived at once, you can speed up the archiving process by disabling indexing. Items can be indexed later, when the Enterprise Vault storage service computer is quiet, by rebuilding the archive indexes.