Managing Managed Folder Retention
I'm trying to do something that MAY be out of scope. Either that or I don't FULLY understand how to configure everything with managed folders, so here's the scenario:
We're running an Exchange 2010 sp1 environment and EV 10 here, and want to create two new folders that we archive off and then delete on a time limit.
Folder one: Users move things to this folder, and it's archived after 6 months. After 4 years, we delete items from the vault, never to be seen again.
Folder two: Users move things to this folder, archived to vault after 6 months, then items stick around until the end of time or the user decides to delete them.
Inbox and all other folders: No action required by the user, items stick around for 6 months then get archived off. After one year, they're deleted from the archive.
I THOUGHT the best way to do this was to set up managed folders in Exchange and have EV run off of the settings from there for the first two folders, but with MSFT moving away from managed folders, this seems less feasible. Also, I'm having trouble wrapping my head around the rules. Can anyone provide a good answer to this? I'm likely overthinking it, but it's always great to get other opinions.
So basically in Exchange 2000 and 2003 you had Exchange Mailbox Manager
You could tell it to go ahead and delete items from certain folders after a certain period of time.
For instance anything in \Inbox keep for 6 months, anything in \calendar keep for 2 years etc
In Exchange 2007 and 2010 they replaced the EMM with Managed Folders.
Managed Folders , among other things, allow for "Retentions" to be placed on the folder
Meaning that you can have
\My Folder 1\ --- have things stick around for 6 years before exchange deletes it
\My Folder 2\ --- have things stick around for 4 years before exchange deletes it.
The way enterprise vault works is it can do one of three things
1. Archive the folder as it would any other folder and don't worry about it being managed
2. Archive the folder and copy the items retention
3. Do not archive the folder at all
So in your case what you would do is you would have your main policy set to archive anything older than 6 months, and then set the archive policy to treat Managed Folders as "Managed" (as opposed to normal or do not archive)
Then what will happen is EV reads the managed folders retention and copies it in to Enterprise Vault and anything archived will be given that retention period
So for instance say with Exchange Managed Folders you gave everyone the following
\1 Year\ <-- with a retention of 1 year
\3 Years\ <--- with a retention of 3 years
\7 Years\ <--- with a retention of 7 years
If you were to set that as "Normal" for managed folders, then EV would give it the default retention for the archive (for instance maybe "3 Years" for all items regardless of folder)
If you were to set it as "Managed", then EV would copy the retention given, 1/3/7 Years, and assign it respectivelyAs for moving away from managed folders, i cant say i've truly been keeping up with whats happening in the next versions, but I have not heard this, but with the push for their own archives, it does not surprise me