Enterprise Vault File System Archiving Placeholder Shortcuts and files with Extended Attributes

Problem

When implementing a file archiving solution that converts the archived items into Shortcuts, by means of creating an additional stream with Reparse Data, the product must comply with the specifications provided for NTFS file systems.

  Microsoft’s official documentation stipulate clear restrictions that apply when establishing Reparse Points.  

The following restrictions apply to reparse points:

·         Reparse points can be established for a directory, but the directory must be empty. Otherwise, the NTFS file system fails to establish the reparse point. In addition, you cannot create directories or files in a directory that contains a reparse point.

·         Reparse points and extended attributes are mutually exclusive. The NTFS file system cannot create a reparse point when the file contains extended attributes, and it cannot create extended attributes on a file that contains a reparse point.

·         Reparse point data, including the tag and optional GUID, cannot exceed 16 kilobytes. Setting a reparse point fails if the amount of data to be placed in the reparse point exceeds this limit.

·         There is a limit of 63 reparse points on any given path.

When Enterprise Vault archives a file and converts it to a Placeholder Shortcut, it creates a Reparse Point stream to store the item’s reference IDs that allow the retrieval of the original content, which was redirected to the Storage Partition.

If the original files already contain Extended Attributes, the FSA Archiving Task reports an error, per file, when attempting to convert the archived files to Placeholder Shortcuts.

Error Message

Event Error:

Event ID: 20551 Failed to write a placeholder file because it has extended attributes. Use EVEARemovalUtility to remove the extended attributes.
File Name: C:\path\filename

Example of the error reported in the FSA Archiving Task Report log:

8/15/2019 8:02:17 AM  \\server.domain.local\X$\Folder1\Folder2\Folder3\SampleDocument‎.docx  73997    FSA Folder Policy Archive ALL          Archive ALL *.* ARCHIVE             *** Error *** - Error making file: \\?\UNC\server.domain.local\X$\Folder1\Folder2\Folder3\SampleDocument‎.docx  a placeholder file because it has extended attributes. Use EVEARemovalUtility to remove the extended attributes.

Cause

The product is reporting that these files cannot be converted to Placeholder Shortcuts because they have Extended Attributes.

The above error advises on the use of the EVEARemovalUtility to remove the extended attributes. However, this tool was built to deal with Extended Attributes inherited when files are imported from a non-Windows Platform where the Operating System sets Extended Attributes as common practice.

Microsoft also supports the implementation of Extended Attributes embedded into Office Open XML Documents data sets.

Solution

Use EVEARemovalUtility to remove the Extended Attribute where possible.

The EVEARemovalUtility was not developed to remove Extended Attributes implemented into such XML data sets as it may contain important information that could lead to partial data loss should the Extended Attributes be removed.

In the event these files are archived with FSA, and the intention is to create Placeholder Shortcuts after the items are archived, the recommendation is to engage the users, who produce such data sets, and determine whether the Extended Attributes can be removed for archival purposes or contain important information.

If the Extended Attributes should not be removed from the XML data sets it is advisable to modify the Archiving Policy and set a rule that archives these data type files without creating a Placeholder Shortcut. Alternatively, the rule can be defined to Archive and Delete, in which case the users would be able to retrieve the items via EV Search - EVS.