exchange 2007 setup by an expert.

[chazzy2501]

I'm running an inherited exchange box that slowly filling up. (see my other thred) I was talking to staff today about clearing there old emails out of the system to unload the database but I was met with resistance. It seems some members of staff are required to keep documents regarding certain pupils until they're 30! This is and will of course break the exchange server, eventually so I now realise that some better policies, journaling etc need to be implimented. As there are legal ramifications for losing this data I thought I ought to bring in an exchange~spert to configure the system rather than me.

 

would anyone reccomend a company to help reconfigure the exchange box?

[RabbieBurns]

storing documents and an email server are mutually exclusive

 

there should be a file server for storing documents, and an archive process for storing them for 30 years

[sukh]

1. As your using exch 2007 youre limited to what you can do, i.e archiving is out of the picture already, natibely exch 2007 doesnt offer this.

2. You mentioned that staff are required to keep certain documents. Now youre in luck, for this you can use journaling. What you need to decide is if you want to keep this data onsite in exch or if you want to journal this data off to the cloud for a fee.

3. There are pros and cons for botg. With the cloud, it will probably cost a little more but you'll have benefits such as it's all managed for you, will be on enterprise infrastructure (depending on who you choose), you dont need to worry about backups for journal mailbox etc..

4. Keep the journal mailbox in house, then all you really got to worry about is storage. If your establishment has a defined compliance, i.e you mention until 30, then you need to make sure that you have the right amount of storage to store that. Although if you get it wrong, it shouldn't matter as you can easily add more storage to exch 2007 and have multiple journal mailboxes, or you could move the jpounal mailbox to a larger store.

5. To set journaling on exch it wont take you more than 20 minutes, if you decide to journal inhouse or in the cloud,

6. Why do you want a Exch consultant, by all means hire me if you want but I'll be done on 20 :-)

[chazzy2501]

I assume the journaling mail box would become huge, where would .. how would I store it?

[sukh]

1. Yes it would be huge, but this all depends on the number of mailboxes you will journal and if you will journal all internal and/or external emails.

2. What you could do is, journal all mailboxes that you need to, then monitor size over months, say every 3 months, and you can backup (which I assume you are already doing), Then delete that journal mailbox and create a new one. This was you can reclaim the space back and you will have that on your backups should you need to do a restores.

3. Also, it depends on the number of email sent/receievd per mailbox etc....

4. So create a mailbox, you may not want to do this on the same store as your other mailboxes, just create another database for it if you wish, this way it will be easier to manage. (Backup/Restore/Maintain Size/Not effect on your otherrs users should you happend to forget to backup for months etc...)

 

Sukh

[chazzy2501]

I have only one storage group and mailstore, if I add a new database would it share the trasaction logs and does journaling create additional logs? I was going to use the exchange 2003 method of journaling the whole database (79GB and counting) would this create 79GB of transaction logs as it journals everything?

 

As space is so tight now only 4GB, I was thinking of migrating the tranaction logs the D drive (20GB free) so I could migrate mailboxes to a 2nd storage group / database on to a newly configured e drive. It would also be an oppertunity to divide staff and pupils mailboxes and thus policies.

[sukh]

1. If you use the same storage group yes, create another seperate one for journaling as mentioned above.

2. If you journal on a storage group level, then it would generate all email received for thoses users, anything exisiting isnt journaled if you havent got it switched on. For this you will have to archive everything.

3. The transactions logs file should get deleted when you perform backups, so this isnt an issue.

4. You can move the log and it's recommended to have logs and DB on seperate drives anyway. But, make sure you do your backups otherwsie your stores will dismount. Make sure you do full or at least incremental.