An Enterprise Vault File Collector service does not run on NetApp file servers or EMC Celerra file servers. Instead, an Enterprise Vault server acts as a proxy server: a binary FSAReportingService program runs on the Enterprise Vault server and performs the file collector tasks. The Enterprise Vault Admin service starts and governs the FSAReportingService program.

If you configure FSA Reporting on several NetApp or Celerra file servers in an Enterprise Vault site, the role of proxy server can require significant resources. From Enterprise Vault 8.0 SP3 onwards, if the site contains more than one Enterprise Vault server, each Enterprise Vault server can act as a proxy for one or more of the non-NTFS file servers, to share the load. When you enable a non-NTFS file server for FSA Reporting, Enterprise Vault assigns as proxy server the Enterprise Vault server that currently acts as proxy for the fewest file servers.

For example, assume that an Enterprise Vault site initially consists of two Enterprise Vault servers, EV1 and EV2. The site has three non-NTFS file servers, FS1, FS2, and FS3, none of which is enabled for FSA Reporting. Table: Allocation of the proxy server role among the Enterprise Vault servers shows how Enterprise Vault allocates the proxy server as you enable FSA Reporting on each of the file servers in turn. The table also shows the result when you add an Enterprise Vault server and another file server.

If you disable and then re-enable FSA Reporting for a non-NTFS file server, Enterprise Vault reassigns the proxy server role to the Enterprise Vault server that currently acts as proxy for the fewest file servers.

If you have more than one Enterprise Vault server in the site, you can examine the EnterpriseVaultFSAReporting database to determine which Enterprise Vault server acts as the proxy server for a particular NTFS file server or Celerra file server.

See Identifying the proxy server for FSA Reporting file collection.