PST import - set an age limit for mail items to be imported

[Calis]

Hi Guys, Im in the process of deploying EV for Exchange 10.0.1. and fairly new to it all.

Is there a way to limit the items imported from a PST by age?

Bascically if a user has a PST with 8 years worth of emails in it and we only want to import the mail items no older then say 3 or 5 years is this possible?

So far my PST locator report is shoing my 800GB of PST which is scarying the crap out or me and looking to reduce total archive size where ever possible.

Thanks.

[Calis]

ok so just to clarify, because some people will ask "why would you want to do that", Im trying to reduce the amount of mail INITIALLY imported in the the Vault.

I know the Retention/delete policies can easily sort out how much email we ultimately end up storing but I'm coming from the perspective of dont bring it in in the first place if possible :)

[Nups]

Hi Calis,

I dont think we can control the no of items to be imported however you may want to improve the performance instead. Here is the doc for the same http://www.symantec.com/docs/HOWTO56481

[Calis]

thanks Life, yeah I thought that might be the case. I've seen that article but its not really what im after.

It would be great if the PST importer could at least understand the "received" Outlook column/attribute so you could choose say "only import mail from this date backwards" similar to the Outlook import/export function.

I cant see if being a huge ask as Outlook is the original PST creator and thats the point of the importer: To import Outlook PST's :)

but in saying all that Im probably trying to do all the heavy lifting from the wrong end. *shrugs*

[Nups]

that would be a good enhancement to the importer.

[GertjanA · Accepted solution]

Hello Calis,

I understand your worries, but you have to keep in mind that EV will perform SIS to the imported data.

If you get 800GB, or maybe even go over TB, this does not mean you also need 800GB of EV-storage! The compression EV does, and the SIS is really good. Very roughly, you can assume that if you have 800GB of PST data, it ends up to 600GB of EV storage.

The only way I can think of is to get the PST's to a server, and then have a cheap worker open the PST's and delete everything older than the x-amount of years. But that is a painfull and slow process.

What I would do as test is to take a few of the largest PST's, import those completely. YOu will then be able to sort of calculate what the EV storage will be.

As Liferhythm states, good enhancement. Please do post it in the ideas section. It might end up in the product sooner than you think!

[Calis]

Thanks GertjanA yes SIS is very good from what Im seeing/reading/learning. Im not so concerned about SIS being able to do its job. I know it will as I've already done some testing with PSTs as you suggested.

From what I can tell the PST Importer is really geared around bluk scan and import type approach where touching each PST is not really necessary. With that said I could virtually guarentee what a lot of people would like to contorl this import process more granularly if manual importation is whats desired/needed.

I'll post to the the enhancments area as you guys sugegsted.

thanks for the feedback..

[Calis]

Thanks GertjanA yes SIS is very good from what Im seeing/reading/learning. Im not so concerned about SIS being able to do its job. I know it will as I've already done some testing with PSTs as you suggested.

From what I can tell the PST Importer is really geared around bluk scan and import type approach where touching each PST is not really necessary. With that said I could virtually guarentee what a lot of people would like to contorl this import process more granularly if manual importation is whats desired/needed.

I'll post to the the enhancments area as you guys sugegsted.

thanks for the feedback..