Understanding Archiving

Archiving is the process of managing the size of an environment's data store by taking a backup copy of historical data, removing it from its native environment, and storing it elsewhere.

By integrating archiving directly into Exchange Server, Microsoft has enabled organizations to store this historical data without the complex administration and (often significant) additional licensing costs that can come with the integration of third-party applications.

Benefits of Archiving

As users send and receive messages, maintaining older messages for historical purposes results in the mailbox (and the associated database) continuing to grow in size. Where users once could function with mailboxes that were measured in the tens (or at the most, hundreds) of megabytes, Exchange Server 2007 and Exchange Server 2010 provide users with a default mailbox size of 2 gigabytes, and it is not unusual for users to fill this space completely and require more.

With the growing need for larger and larger mailboxes comes a need to systematically archive historical data, freeing up space inside the user's mailbox to enhance performance, while retaining access to the historical data when it is needed.

Archiving can also help organizations better address compliance and legal electronic discovery requirements by allowing the historical data to be easily managed and searched.

Users with an archive enabled can perform searches on both the primary mailbox AND the archive mailbox at once-searching through all subfolders for the desired message.

Exchange Server 2010 now features new archiving capabilities that combine with additional enhanced mailbox management features that include the capability to perform advanced multi-mailbox searches and apply legal hold and granular retention polices for individual mailboxes.

Archiving in Exchange Server 2010 is composed of four main concepts:

• Personal Archive-A personal archive is an additional mailbox that is associated with a user's primary mailbox. It appears beneath the primary mailbox folders in Outlook Web App 2010 (similar to the way .pst archives were shown) and is labeled Online Archive - Username. This enables the user to have direct access to email within the archive just as they would their primary mailbox. Users can drag and drop PST files into the Personal Archive, for easier online access-and more efficient discovery by the organization. Mail items from the primary mailbox can also be offloaded to the Personal Archive automatically, using Retention Polices, reducing the size and improving the performance of the primary mailbox. With a personal archive, users can now have access to their archived mail without having to have local access to a .pst file and can access the archived mail from anywhere in the world using Outlook Web App.
• Retention policies-Retention policies are utilized to enable and enforce desired retention settings to specific items or folders in a mailbox. These policies are configured by the Exchange Administrator and are displayed inside each email, along with a header stating the applied policy and delete date. Utilizing retention policies makes it easy for a user to identify when an email is set for expiration-and the user has the ability to apply a new expiration policy if the email needs to be retained for a longer period. Administrators can set also a default policy that can move messages from the primary mailbox to the Archive automatically, removing the responsibility for maintaining the archive from the user.
• Multi-Mailbox Search-In Exchange Server 2010, the ability to search for mailbox items across multiple mailboxes, including email, attachments, calendar items, tasks, contacts, and IRM-protected files, is a welcome addition to those who specialize in eDiscovery. Multi-mailbox search searches both the primary and archive mailboxes for a user simultaneously and utilizes an easy-to-use control panel. Utilizing this feature, authorized personnel (such as HR representatives, legal, and compliance users) perform searches as needed, without the extremely time-consuming involvement of your already overworked IT staff. Mail that is located through a mailbox search can be copied and moved to a specified mailbox or external store for further investigation.
• Legal Hold-Placing a legal hold on a mailbox enables immediate preservation of a user's mailbox, including deleted and edited mailbox emails, appointments, tasks, and contacts. This hold is applied to both the primary mailbox and Personal Archive. A legal hold can be set on individual mailboxes or across the enterprise. Additionally, administrators have the option to automatically alert the users that a hold has been placed on their mailbox or not, as desired.