Archiving mailbox advantages

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 14:28:05 Z

We are discussing the pros/cons of implementing archiving mailbox. If we use the lowest cost hard drives for our primary mailbox and increase the mailbox limits to a high number, enough to handle the bulk of the PST sitting out on the desktops, are there any reasons to even consider adding the alternate archiving mailbox for users?

Archiving mailbox advantages

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 15:13:49 Z

Personal Archive: is an additional mailbox associated with a user's primary mailbox. It appears alongside the primary mailbox folders in Outlook. In this way, the user has direct access to e-mail within the archive just as they would their primary mailbox. Users can drag and drop PST files into the Personal Archive, for easier online access – and more efficient discovery by the organization. Mail items from the primary archive can also be offloaded to the Personal Archive automatically, using Retention Polices, reducing the size and improving the performance of the primary mailbox. In addition, users can search both their Personal Archive and primary mailbox simultaneously using Outlook.

Reference : http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/2010/en/us/Archiving-and-Retention.aspx

regards

Mumin CICEK | Exchange - MVP | www.cozumpark.com | www.mumincicek.com

Archiving mailbox advantages

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 18:18:31 Z

I read that already. My questions is what kind of performance improvement will we get that is worth considering? vs having all the msg on the primary mailbox. All the other things mentioned are achieved by having all the msgs in the primary mailbox, thus reducing complexity.

Archiving mailbox advantages

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 19:12:10 Z

I read that already. My questions is what kind of performance improvement will we get that is worth considering? vs having all the msg on the primary mailbox. All the other things mentioned are achieved by having all the msgs in the primary mailbox, thus reducing complexity.

If you leave all the mail in the primary mailbox it will all be cached locally to the hard drive. Outlook will then have to read that entire cached file. This would take up more space on the HDD and might not only effect outlooks performance but the client's PC.

You want to Archive a users mail, so the local copy of the database is smaller and faster to read.

Of course I am talking about difference between a 1GB mail file and 10 GB mail file.

The main thing is to give users a small, fast portable mail database local to them, that has 90%+ of data they access everyday. The uptick is if the mail is in Archive and your enforce retention polices you can reach lot data and security standards easley.

Archiving mailbox advantages

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 19:13:55 Z

^++

I like how my OST is nice and trim since enabling my archive mailbox and moving items I haven't used in years to it. The performance on my primary mailbox kicked up a notch and setting up a new Outlook profile doesn't take nearly as long as it did before.

Brian Day / MCSA / CCNA, Exchange/AD geek.

Archiving mailbox advantages

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 20:38:44 Z

Since we don't have the beta running, we were wondering if the archive mbx would be cached. So, you are saying only the primary mbx is cached (for those that use cache mode) and the archive is not. So if you run outlook off-line, one does not have access to the archive mbx.

How about the passive copy of the archive database? If the archive mailbox is in a different database(an archive db) than the primary mailbox, is it considered an active database? and does it have to replicate to the same server where the passive copy of the primary mailbox is at?

Separating the archive mbx db from where the primary mbx db is at gives us more flexibility. We are talking about 72 TB of active databases.

Archiving mailbox advantages

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 21:40:45 Z

Correct, anything in the archive is not cached and is not available in offline mode.

There is not passive archive DB because the primary and archive mailboxes have to be in the same DB. I'm hoping MS can change this down the road and let us put archives in different DBs so we can have quicker RTOs and quicker backups of the primary mailbox DBs. We will not be adopting the backupless option yet.

Brian Day / MCSA / CCNA, Exchange/AD geek.

Archiving mailbox advantages

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 08:51:26 Z

Hi Brian,

Just to check I have this straight...are you saying that the Primary Mailbox and the Archive Mailbox have to be on the same DB...? I thought one of the 'features' of the archive mailbox was that its DB could be hosted on slower or less spec'd disks (such as SATA)?

Vaguely - wandering the digital landscape without a map...

Archiving mailbox advantages

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 10:20:53 Z

Hi,

Based on the info received (not tested) you can not split the primary and the archive mailboxes on separate storage ... but will be probably one of the first enhancement.

Yannick

Archiving mailbox advantages

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 14:54:07 Z

Correct, they have to live on the same database at RTM. But, you may find the I/O improvements mean all DBs could live on SATA.

Brian Day / MCSA / CCNA, Exchange/AD geek.

Archiving mailbox advantages

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 15:38:42 Z

As Brian said, since you are mixing your archive (very low use - low I/O) and regular mailboxes (higher I/O) on the same spindles, you may find that you need less I/O overall and be able to get by with SATA storage for the entire database. So there isn't really a performance need to move the archive database to other spindles.

There are of course other reasons to have the archive mailboxes on seperate storage.

Joel Stidley | Microsoft Exchange MVP | http://exchangeexchange.com