Two archiving questions

[Elliot_G]

Sorry about these basic questions. I am trying to get to grip with a rather large new archive setup. When i get the hang of these I hope to be helping answering questions as well as asking them.

1   I have been confused by the fact that when I do an archiving run in report mode, and this is followed by the normal hightly run, rather more material gets archived than indicated by the report. Does this mean that during a scheduled archiving period more than one pass through the mailboxes can take place?

2   I was originally told that one advantage of archiving was greater compression of the data. However, we have been observing no significant change - the total size of storage (mailbox plus archive) for our larger mailboxes seems no smaller than the mailbox's original size. Is this expected? Will the decrease come in when the dvs files are placed in collections (cabs)?

Thanks for any help.

Elliot

[TonySterling · Accepted solution]

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1   I have been confused by the fact that when I do an archiving run in report mode, and this is followed by the normal hightly run, rather more material gets archived than indicated by the report. Does this mean that during a scheduled archiving period more than one pass through the mailboxes can take place?

2   I was originally told that one advantage of archiving was greater compression of the data. However, we have been observing no significant change - the total size of storage (mailbox plus archive) for our larger mailboxes seems no smaller than the mailbox's original size. Is this expected? Will the decrease come in when the dvs files are placed in collections (cabs)?

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For question 1: Yes, archiving can make more than one pass if it has time for for aged based archiving policies.

For questoin 2: What is your shortcut content?  If you are using full message body you will only see space saving of attachments and the full message will still be in Exchange.  What you will want to do is use a custom property and just leave the first X number of charecters in the short cut.  I believe 300-500 charecters might help you realize more space savings, but you will need to verify for yourself and see what your users will let you get away with.  :)

Regards,

[Elliot_G]

Thanks for your quick repsonse Tony. In fact we are using quota based archiving, but still seem to get more than one pass. We also do have a custom shortcut currently set to 500 characters. You may have misunderstood my point here - there is no question that we are greatly reducing user space in the exchange mailstores. However, the saved space on the Exchange servers* seems very similar to the amount of storage we are now taking up in the archive. I was led to understand that the space consumed by the archive would be less than that proeviously used in the Exchange mailstores due to compression, but this does not seem to be the case.

Elliot

*This is being looked at on a user by user basis. Overall, of course, the Exchange mailstore files are not reducing as we have not done an offline defrag.

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@Tony Sterling wrote:

For question 1: Yes, archiving can make more than one pass if it has time for for aged based archiving policies.

For questoin 2: What is your shortcut content?  If you are using full message body you will only see space saving of attachments and the full message will still be in Exchange.  What you will want to do is use a custom property and just leave the first X number of charecters in the short cut.  I believe 300-500 charecters might help you realize more space savings, but you will need to verify for yourself and see what your users will let you get away with.  :)

Regards,

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[Brian_Day]

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@Elliot G wrote:

Thanks for your quick repsonse Tony. In fact we are using quota based archiving, but still seem to get more than one pass. We also do have a custom shortcut currently set to 500 characters. You may have misunderstood my point here - there is no question that we are greatly reducing user space in the exchange mailstores. However, the saved space on the Exchange servers* seems very similar to the amount of storage we are now taking up in the archive. I was led to understand that the space consumed by the archive would be less than that proeviously used in the Exchange mailstores due to compression, but this does not seem to be the case.

Elliot

*This is being looked at on a user by user basis. Overall, of course, the Exchange mailstore files are not reducing as we have not done an offline defrag.

Hi Elliot,

My organization is also doing quota based archiving with 500 character shortcuts. We definitely only get one pass on users during the scheduled time as expected while using Quota based.

As for your space consumed in the vault, thats beyond me. :) I've seen the same thing at times, but not in others with our setup. What kind of storage are you using? We're using a Centera with collections enabled.

I don't know if EV supports Single Instance Storage if you are not storing these on a SIS enabled device like a Centera. If it cannot then, yes I would only assume you'd see an actual storage savings if they got wrapped up into CABs. Otherwise 5 users with the same 1MB attachment would end up taking up 5MB of space in the vault because it would have to be exported as five different items.

Message Edited by Brian Day on 09-11-2007 12:04 AM

Message Edited by Brian Day on 09-11-2007 12:04 AM

[Elliot_G]

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@brian Day wrote:

Hi Elliot,

My organization is also doing quota based archiving with 500 character shortcuts. We definitely only get one pass on users during the scheduled time as expected while using Quota based.

As for your space consumed in the vault, thats beyond me. :) I've seen the same thing at times, but not in others with our setup. What kind of storage are you using? We're using a Centera with collections enabled.

I don't know if EV supports Single Instance Storage if you are not storing these on a SIS enabled device like a Centera. If it cannot then, yes I would only assume you'd see an actual storage savings if they got wrapped up into CABs. Otherwise 5 users with the same 1MB attachment would end up taking up 5MB of space in the vault because it would have to be exported as five different items.

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Hi Brian,

The only reason why I think we are getting more than one pass is that the amount of stuff being archived per pass is greater than the amount the reports predicted. This would seem to be possible only if the users who had more than 2000 items waiting backup get a second bite at the cherry. I haven't found a way of getting a report on a real archive run, so my conclusion is guess work.

I believe we do get SIS even though we are not using a specialised device for storage. In fact, as I have been using the very large mailboxes as my yardstick, this may explain why I am not seeing a reduction. To get such large mailboxes these users would have to be storing mainly messages that other people don't have!

Elliot