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MichaelBalackFlag for Singapore

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How to archive Exchange mailbox?

There is a MS Exchange organization, with 5 Exch 2010 servers holding different roles. 3 of them on hub transport and mailbox, and 2 of them are CAS. There are 2 mailbox databases, both on DAG. The problem is, we found that few of the mailboxes (altogether 250+) are exceed 20 GB. These mailboxes are still active, although the mailbox owner already left the company. However, other users still have to access, especially to grab and share those latest incoming mails, we have to leave them live.

Now, both exch mailbox databases are in 500+ GB, we are thinking of doing some kinds of house keeping, at least to avoid/slow down the growth of the mb DB. We are thinking for those exceed 20 GB, we just want to keep those mails that dated this year, and take away mails that were last year of before. Are we suppose have to archive them? But, can I only archive those mails that based on date? or export them to PST?

Another condition is, suppose only this year's mails are kept on the mailbox, others are archived or kept some where away from server. But, if users want to see mails that are belong to last year one day, what am I suppose to do to fulfill their need?
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Scott C
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You should set up Archiving on that mailbox.

http://exchangeserverpro.com/exchange-2010-archiving/

This way you avoid the troubles and possibility of losing data using .PST files.
One of the best solutions that you find around is Metalogix Archive Manager Exchange Edition.  We used to have mailboxes as big as 40 GB.  All that has been brought down by Archive Manager to less than 5 GB.  The mailboxes are just not growing now.  The jobs run every night and archive mails older than 90 days.  Well that's our company policy.  The user is able to see those archived emails.  The only thing that happens in the backend is that older mails are shifted to another storage and then archive manager places pointers in the place of the email.

You can read more here and get a trial and test it out in your test environment.

http://www.metalogix.com/product/archive-manager-exchange-edition
Exch 2007 is when MS planned their move away from exmerge. I think it was Exch2010 that MS released a suite a mailbox import/export cmndlets. The New-MailboxExportRequest cmdlet is the one you want.
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff459227(v=exchg.141).aspx
You can script it into a chron job so that housekeeping is triggered automatically at whatever intervals you prefer.
You have a couple of options as far as making them available for future use. You can just save them as PSTs or import them back into Exch in another mailbox or a completely different mailstor.
One option is to close off the existing ex employee mailbox and have new emails delivered to a new mailbox.

For most clients I advise we archive off departing employees mailboxes and assign the email address for the ex employee as a secondary email address to the new employee.

If the mailbox is acting as a shared mailbox then perhaps its time to have new emails delivered elsewhere
If you're open to using a dedicated email archiving tool, we can help. Our Exchange software ensures you never have to use PSTs, can save everything in one central store anywhere you choose and archive your mailboxes in any way you see fit. It also makes it easy for your end users to find any email they might need using the search functionality.

You can trial a free 30 day trial and get some info via the link below.

https://www.exclaimer.com/mail-archiver/

Please let us know if we can be of any more help.

All the best,

Exclaimer
Hi,
Just Start the Exchange Management Shell and run below command:
Get-Mailbox -Identity <<mailbox>> -Archive | `ft ArchiveGuid, ArchiveName, ArchiveQuota

Open in new window


Where:
Default mailbox quota is 2GB

To set mailbox archive quota run below command:
Set-Mailbox –Identity <<mailbox>> –ArchiveQuota 10GB

Open in new window

After running this command the default mailbox archive quota will be 10 GB

You can also do this from Exchange Management Console. Just follow below mentioned steps:
1. Open the Exchange Management Console.
2. Expand the Exchange On-Premise and then expand the Recipient Configuration and then select Mailbox.
3. In the Results Pane, select one or more users that need to have an Archive.
4. Right-click the selected users and select “Enable Archive.” Click Yes in the license requirement warning, and the archive will be created.
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ASKER

Hi all,

Please give me some time to go through the suggested articles and methods. I'll get back to you guys as soon as possible.
Hi all,

I just want parts of the mails for the given mailbox to be archived. Shall I use mailboxexportrequest to export these parts of mails (may be based on date), to a pst?
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Adam the 32-bit Aardvark
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Thanks for codetwo for the suggestions and commands. It simply works great.