Exchange Server 2010 introduces an integrated archive solution named personal archives; this solution provides an alternative to personal
store (.pst) files, providing you with the means to phase out these
files by importing them to the personal archive associated with the
user's mailbox. Eliminating .pst files rids you of the many headaches
associated with them:
Access from file shares is not supported.
They
can be challenging to deal with during a legal or regulatory discovery
request. (Searching .pst files scattered across file servers, laptops,
desktops, and removable storage can be difficult if not impossible.)
A personal archive is a
mailbox that can be used for alternative storage, and is optionally
created when the user's primary mailbox is created, or it can be
enabled on an existing mailbox. The personal archive is accessible by
the user in Outlook 2010, Exchange Server 2010 OWA, or Outlook 2007
(with the appropriate updates). In addition, the personal archive is
not accessible to offline clients, such as Outlook in cached mode; this
may be seen as a limitation to some users who have grown accustomed to
having their .pst files available on their local computer. Enabling a
personal archive for an existing mailbox is shown in Figure 1.
Note:
Exchange
Server 2010 personal archives functionality requires an Enterprise CAL
for each mailbox configured with a personal archive.
Note:
In
the initial Exchange Server 2010 release, the personal archive was
restricted to the same database the user's primary mailbox resided on;
however, in Exchange Server 2010 SP1 the archive mailbox can be placed
on any database in the organization, or in Exchange Online.
When a new mailbox is created with the New Mailbox Wizard in the EMC, a personal archive can be created on the Archive Settings page of the wizard as shown in Figure 2.
Note:
When
an archive mailbox is created, content is moved automatically from the
user's primary mailbox to his archive based on the default archive
policy if no retention policy is assigned to the mailbox. If a
retention policy is assigned to the mailbox, that policy supersedes the
default archive policy and items are moved to the archive based on the
assigned retention policy.
The default archive policy is a retention policy composed of the retention tags outlined in Table 1.
Table 1. Contents of the Default Archive Policy in Exchange Server 2010
| RETENTION TAG NAME | TAG TYPE | DESCRIPTION |
|---|
| Default two-year move to archive | Default | This
tag applies to all items in the mailbox that don't have a retention tag
applied directly or are inherited from the folder; items older than two
years are moved to the archive. |
| Personal one-year move to archive | Personal | Items or folders assigned this tag are automatically moved to the archive mailbox after one year. |
| Personal five-year move to archive | Personal | Items or folders assigned this tag are automatically moved to the archive mailbox after five years. |
| Personal never move to archive | Personal | Items or folders assigned this tag are never archived automatically. |
Note:
The
storage quotas for personal archives are set separately from the quotas
on the user's primary mailbox, and are configured for unlimited storage
by default; if unlimited quotas are not suitable for your environment,
the archive warning quota can be set in the Archive Quota dialog box on
the Mailbox Settings tab of the user's mailbox properties in the EMC.
You can modify the archive warning quota as well as the archive quota
with the Set-Mailbox cmdlet using the ArchiveQuota and ArchiveWarningQuota switches. The archive quota sets at what point the user will no longer be able to move items to the personal archive.
The retention tags linked to
the default archive policy are system tags created by Exchange Server
2010 setup, and by default are not returned in the output of the Get-RetentionPolicyTag cmdlet unless you specify the IncludeSystemTags parameter.
