Quota based archiving & shortcut deletion - How is it programmed by symantec?

[Hans_Peeters]

We use quota based arching as described below:
- mailbox quota on exchange: 600MB
- No prohibit send & receive is active. (user can always use mail, even when quata exceeds)
- Archive items until mailbox available storage reaches 5%
- Never archive mails younger than 2 weeks
- Shortcut deletion 4 years
- do not archive deleted items

My question concerns how symantec implemented the archiving run in above scenario:
During every run, is there always a shortcut deletion or only if archiving the non-archived mails is not enough to reach the available percentage free storage?

I cannot find an answer in the help. See help below:

Ather question: wat are Exchange Managed Folders (help file refers to this)

Recommendations for quota-based archiving

When you configure archiving based on quota, or on age and quota, consider the recommendations given here. These recommendations help you to avoid setting the quota percentage too high for your Enterprise Vault configuration. If the quota percentage is too high, Enterprise Vault may archive too many items as it tries to achieve the quota target.

The recommendations are as follows:

• Review your shortcut settings and consider using smaller shortcuts. With smaller shortcuts, Enterprise Vault saves more space in a mailbox for each item that it archives. The result is that Enterprise Vault needs to archive fewer items to achieve the percentage of free space that you require.

  If you use large shortcuts when the average item is small, Enterprise Vault saves less space for each item that it archives.

  To find out the average shortcut size, run the Exchange Mailbox Archiving task in Report run mode.

  You specify the settings that determine what information is left in a shortcut on the mailbox policy Shortcut Content tab.

• Consider making shortcuts expire earlier. When shortcuts expire earlier, you save mailbox space and avoid archiving too many items. You set the age at which Enterprise Vault deletes shortcuts on the mailbox policy Shortcut Deletion tab.

• Specify that Enterprise Vault starts by archiving large items. Enterprise Vault then archives items that use the most mailbox space first.

• Start with a low quota percentage, and increase it gradually until you get the results you require.

• Make sure that there is enough archiving each night so that users have sufficient space for the following day.

• Check the mailbox policy Advanced settings Archive deleted items and Archive Exchange Managed Folders.

  Items in the Deleted Items folder are included in the Exchange Server mailbox storage limit calculation. By default Enterprise Vault does not archive items from the Deleted Items folder. So items in the Deleted Items folder can prevent Enterprise Vault from reaching the quota percentage target.

  Managed folders are also included in the Exchange Server mailbox storage limit calculation. By default Enterprise Vault archives from managed folders, but you can configure it so that it does not archive from managed folders. In this case, Enterprise Vault may not be able to achieve the quota percentage target.

• Check the mailbox policy Advanced setting Strip attachments to non-shortcut items. By default, Enterprise Vault removes attachments from calendar, meeting, task, and contact items after it archives these items. If attachments are not removed from these items, then archiving them does not save space in the mailbox.

Further points to note are as follows:

• If no Microsoft Exchange storage limit applies to a mailbox, Enterprise Vault cannot process the mailbox with quota-based archiving.

• In Exchange, you can specify the maximum space that a mailbox can occupy before the user is prohibited from sending or receiving messages. If you archive by quota and this storage limit has been exceeded, then Enterprise Vault cannot process the mailbox with quota-based archiving.

  The solution is to remove or raise the limit, archive until a suitable storage level is reached, and then reimpose the limit if necessary. Enterprise Vault normally keeps users within quota, so you may decide to remove the limit.

[JesusWept3]

In Enterprse Vault 8, shortcut deletion will always occur as it not only does archiving, but it also does shortcut processing, deletion of which is one of them.
As for exchange managed folders, they are new to Exchange 2007:
you can read more about them here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee364744.aspx

[TonySterling]

For you last question you can base archiving on the No Send limit.  Check the Registry do for PreferQuotaNoSendLimit.

Location:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\KVS\Enterprise Vault\Agents or for 64 bit HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\KVS\Enterprise Vault\Agents

PreferQuotaNoSendLimit

Content DWORD

Avalue greater than zero signifies a preference for the NO_SEND limit
over the NO_SEND_RECEIVE limit. If the value is zero or missing then
the behavior is as before and NO_SEND_RECEIVE takes preference.
However, if the NO_SEND_RECEIVE limit is set to a value smaller than
the NO_SEND limit then NO_SEND_RECEIVE will be used, even if the
registry value is set. This has to be the case otherwise the archive
attempt will fail.

[Hans_Peeters]

Hi Tony,

I am a little bit confused with your answer.
We have unmarked "prohibit send at" and Prohibit send and receive at".

On the limits tab sheet of a exchange mailbox store properties page we have only a mark for issue warning.


Hi JesusWept2,

So I can conclude that shortcut deletion always takes place even if your free space is below the percentage free space?

[JesusWept3 · Accepted solution]

Always as long as you're not over quota

[Joseph_Rodgers]

Here's another great article on Exchanged Managed folders. 

http://www.msexchange.org/articles_tutorials/exchange-server-2007/compliance-policies-archiving/exchange-2007-messaging-records-management-part1.html