Managing Managed Folder Retention

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 respectively

As 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