I'm having some frustrations trying to configure the Managed Folder Assistant to behave how I want it to in Exchange 2010 SP2. I've read all of the articles about the MFA, the differences between RTM and SP1 (scheduled vs. throttled), and the crux of my
issue is that I desperately want the process to go back to being scheduled instead of continuous.
Here is my situation:
I'm starting with a single Exchange server with a single Mailbox Database with offsite VM replica backups happening nightly.
As the Exchange database grows, the nightly backups take longer and longer. Defragmenting and compacting the Exchange database reduces the backup times, but only slightly. My goal is to archive the bulk of the mail to an Archive Database and then perform
archival every Friday evening so that the size of the regular daily differential backup (i.e. the size of the Mailbox Database) is small on weekdays and the lengthy differential (i.e. the size of the Archive Database) runs on weekends according to schedule.
Is there any way to force the Managed Folder Assistant Process to behave in this way? From what I've read, it looks like I can set the ManagedFolderWorkCycle to 7.00:00:00 and it will only run every seven days, but I don't see how I can specify when it starts.
From what I've read, SP1/2 will ignore the ManagedFolderAssistantSchedule even if you do have it set.
I've considered creating scripts associated with scheduled tasks that automatically enable/disable the Assistant process to synthesize this effect, but I would very much rather configure it entirely internal to Exchange, since that would eliminate the possibility
of the automated script cutting the process off before it's finished archiving.
