So this month we are go to start automatically deleting emails older than X days from our exchange server using Exchange 2003's build in Mailbox Manager. From my test it seems to work well in report mode. It generates a nice report that is sent to the Administrators mailbox (or any mailbox you'd like) listed below. This is the general, it's a sum of all the messages that would be deleted and the amount of space I would potentially get back. I ran the test on a portion of my userbase.
The email sent to the Admin mailbox;
The Microsoft Exchange Server Mailbox Manager has completed processing mailboxes
Started at: 2006-09-05 09:25:48
Stopped at: 2006-09-05 09:35:49
Mailboxes processed: 113
Messages that would be moved or deleted: 110803
Size of messages that would be moved or deleted: 12381.03 MB
Here is what is inside the report;
Cleaning Mailbox user@company.com
Recipient Policy: purge test
Folder Deleted Items Contents: 126 Items (8.37 MB)
Folder Deleted Items Contents: 126 Items (8.37 MB)
Folder Deleted Items Done: 0 Items Processed, 0 Items Would Be Moved or Deleted (0 (null))
Folder / Contents: 0 Items (1.00 KB)
Folder / Contents: 0 Items (1.00 KB)
Folder / Done: 0 Items Processed, 0 Items Would Be Moved or Deleted (0 (null))
Folder /Inbox Contents: 433 Items (328.14 MB)
Folder /Inbox Contents: 433 Items (328.14 MB)
Folder /Inbox Done: 0 Items Processed, 295 Items Would Be Moved or Deleted (77093 (null))
Folder /Outbox Contents: 0 Items (0.00 KB)
Folder /Outbox Contents: 0 Items (0.00 KB)
Folder /Outbox Done: 0 Items Processed, 0 Items Would Be Moved or Deleted (0 (null))
Folder /Sent Items Contents: 18 Items (1.37 MB)
Folder /Sent Items Contents: 18 Items (1.37 MB)
Folder /Sent Items Done: 0 Items Processed, 0 Items Would Be Moved or Deleted (0 (null))
Mailbox user@company.com Contents (before processing): 577 Items (337.88 MB)
Mailbox user@company.com Done: 5 Folders Processed, 295 Items Would Be Moved Or Deleted (77093 (null))
We are doing this b/c for the life of me I'm don't know why people still won't clean up their mailboxes. Even after countless email notifications, howto's instructions on our intranet and even mailbox limits the users still have 200+mb mailboxes. So we are going to automate this process.
When I was originally looking to set this up I went to Micosoft's website and didn't find a thing. I ended up at Msexchange.org they have a very nice write up on how to do this. What I manged to find on Microsoft's site is how to exclude users from this process.
3 comments:
test
Sure wish I could implement something like this in my environment. Unfortunately, we have execs think that they need to keep an email that was sent to them back in 1999 in the Inbox.
zondor,
In our environment we do have very old emails but they are stored in public folders then our KVS system archives them off the server to near line storage. This process ensures that the data is backed up and retrievable as well as lightens the load on the exchange stores. Or they can alway .PST the emails.
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