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Quota based archiving

Elliot_G
Level 4
Sorry about asking another newbie question...

I am trying to put some user documentation together including information on how archiving policy works. We are going with quota based archiving so that we can have a reasonable estimate of the size requirement of our Exchange storage areas. And I find the admin guide documentation a little unclear.

Our settings are to "start with items larger than 1024 kB" and then "Archive remaining items, taking oldest items first and then stopping when a mailbox has 20% storage limit free". We also don't archive items younger than 30 days.

All this is straightforward, but what i cannot get clear is when archiving starts. Will it archive items 30 days or more old and bigger than 1024 kB even if the mailbox is under 80% of quota? That is sort of implied by the conditions, but it isn't clear. So, for example, if a user had a quota of say 250 mB, and had only 120 mB of email in his mailbox, would the process still archive his 30 day + emails that are >1024 mB? Or does it only kick off when there is less than 20% free?

In short, the conditions tell when quota based archiving stops, but are vague on when it starts. Any guidance appreciated!




6 REPLIES 6

Suresh_Vangara
Level 4
Elliot
 
Yes when archiving starts, it will archive items 30 days or more old and bigger than 1024 kB even if the mailbox is under 80% of quota.
 
SK
 

Elliot_G
Level 4
Interesting. So any user with items greater than 1024 kB will get them archived, even it thye are weel below quota, as soon as the items reach the minimum time. I wonder why they designed it that way?

Suresh_Vangara
Level 4
DoDo will you take that?

Gary_Avery
Level 4
Hi, my understanding on this is that with your policy archiving will only kick-in when a user exceeds 80% usage, at which point it will archive messages over 30 days old starting with the oldest messages first and as a quick hit it will try and grab messages over 1mb in size, and continue through the rest of the messages if its unable to get down to its 20% free.
 
Running archive in report mode against a user will give you a good indication of what its going to do.
 
Cheers 

Michael_Bilsbor
Level 6
Accredited
1. We only archive when they are over the limit
2. So we then determine how much we need to archive.
3. Based upon the settings, we will archive items larger than XMB (assuming they are at least older than Y days).  So that lets us archive a few big items, which is perhaps all that we need to do.
4. If after the above 3. we need to archive more then we'll just archives emails from the mailbox, starting with the oldest first, until we've archive all that we need to/can.  Again we still won't archive items younger then Y days.
 
 
 

Brian_Day
Level 6


@Elliot G wrote:
Will it archive items 30 days or more old and bigger than 1024 kB even if the mailbox is under 80% of quota? That is sort of implied by the conditions, but it isn't clear.



Nope. Do a report mode run of someone with 19% free and someone with 21% free and you will see the person with 81% free will have "0" for "items that will be archived".

We are going to be doing quota based archiving ourselves, but I have serious issues with the way my enterprise has chosen this route. They want to limit Exchange storage to 50MB per mailbox. Shortcuts take up space obviously so at some point in the future you'll end up with a mailbox that is full of shortcuts and no more space left. If each shortcut was 2K, then somewhere around 25k items worth of shortcuts you'll end up with a full mailbox. What do you do then?

1) Go back to archive.pst files and be stuck back in that nightmare scenario? You'll only be archiving (Outlook version of archiving) shortcuts at that point.

2) Tell users "too bad, delete some shortcuts." I bet that will go over like a fart in a spacesuit.

3) Increase the exchange quotas? This will result in never-ending EDB sizes, but growth will at least be slowed greatly and possibly more predictable.

Oh boy, so many joyous options here. :D