Microsoft Exchange Server and Mail Archiving

[techead]

Hi

When we go on leave at the office, we are told that our email boxes will be archived for us by IT if they get full. Our limit is 1GB.

We have a number of email groups, so 1GB is very little for us. This means that if you go on leave, without doubt your mailbox gets archived.

We are told that the mailbox size cannot be increased, because once increased the allocation can then not be removed and the space on the drive is basically "lost/wasted" after being changed back to 1GB.

Can anyone confirm this? Or offer an alternative solution, because this mail archiving causes a freakin headache, and often screws up meeting requests that come through when during the leave period.

 

[Cray]

Hi

When we go on leave at the office, we are told that our email boxes will be archived for us by IT if they get full. Our limit is 1GB.

We have a number of email groups, so 1GB is very little for us. This means that if you go on leave, without doubt your mailbox gets archived.

We are told that the mailbox size cannot be increased, because once increased the allocation can then not be removed and the space on the drive is basically "lost/wasted" after being changed back to 1GB.

Can anyone confirm this? Or offer an alternative solution, because this mail archiving causes a freakin headache, and often screws up meeting requests that come through when during the leave period.

Somewhat true but not the full story... Up to Exchange 2010 (can't comment on Exchange 2013 ), the Mailbox store (containing all Mailboxes) would could only grow online. Any mailboxes that where deleted or mail removed get marked as white space but the store size would remain the same. This space on the server is not freed up until an offline store defrag was done which would shrink the store size.(offline means you need to dismount the store for maintenance).

There are ways to free up space without taking mailboxes offline but it depends on how many Stores you currently have and how much free space you have on the server...

 

[TheGuy]

Somewhat true but not the full story... Up to Exchange 2010 (can't comment on Exchange 2013 ), the Mailbox store (containing all Mailboxes) would could only grow online. Any mailboxes that where deleted or mail removed get marked as white space but the store size would remain the same. This space on the server is not freed up until an offline store defrag was done which would shrink the store size.(offline means you need to dismount the store for maintenance).

There are ways to free up space without taking mailboxes offline but it depends on how many Stores you currently have and how much free space you have on the server...

From a Management perspective it would be too much hassle to keep resizing user's mailboxes.

Can you not ask them to turn of Auto Archive for you and then let you manually archive yourself. They can set it so that you still receive mail but cannot send if your mailbox is over the limit.

The other option is to ask them to configure the server to not archive calendar items.

 

[Cray]

The other option is to ask them to configure the server to not archive calendar items.

This would be my suggestion as well, what Archiving solution are you using, 3rd party?