Exchange Server, developed by Microsoft, is a powerful messaging and collaboration platform that serves as an email server within organizations. Its significance in businesses is undeniable, offering a range of features that streamline communication, foster collaboration, and improve overall productivity.
In this guide, we will explore the essential aspects of managing email storage, organizing archives, and implementing retention policies within your Exchange Server environment.
Effective management of mailbox quotas on the Exchange server is crucial for optimizing storage utilization and ensuring smooth email operations. We will delve into the configuration of mailbox quotas, enabling you to set appropriate limits on mailbox sizes, restrict storage usage, and avoid issues caused by overflowing mailboxes.
Additionally, we will explore the concept of email archiving, which plays a vital role in preserving valuable data, reducing mailbox clutter, and meeting compliance requirements. Our step-by-step instructions will help you configure and manage archives, providing a secure and efficient way to store and retrieve historical email data.
Furthermore, we will discuss the importance of retention policies in maintaining data integrity and compliance. You will learn how to define retention policies to automatically manage the lifecycle of emails, apply retention tags, and enforce data retention periods. By implementing proper retention policies, you can ensure that essential data is retained for the required period while eliminating unnecessary clutter.
Whether you are a system administrator, IT professional, or simply interested in Exchange Server management, this blog post will equip you with the knowledge and practical guidance needed to configure mailbox quotas, archives, and retention policies effectively on Exchange Server 2019. Let’s dive in and unlock the full potential of these essential features to streamline your email management processes.
Getting Started
In our previous guide, we walked through how to install the Exchange Server 2019 on Windows Server 2022. It is a recommendation to have the Exchange Server 2019 installed before you proceed with the below configurations. You can view the guide by clicking on the below link.
Once installed, proceed as shown below.
1. Configure Mailbox Quotas on Exchange Server 2019
The Mailbox Quotas are limits set on the storage capacity assigned to individual user mailboxes in an email system, such as Exchange Server. These quotas define the maximum amount of data that users can store in their mailboxes, including emails, attachments, calendar entries, and other mailbox items.
Typically, mailbox quotas include three components:
- Issue Warning Quota: This is a threshold set below the mailbox quota limit. When a user’s mailbox reaches or exceeds this limit, they receive a warning notification indicating that they are nearing their mailbox storage capacity.
- Prohibit Send Quota: This is the maximum storage limit for a mailbox. Once this quota is reached, users are prevented from sending new emails, but they can still receive incoming messages.
- Prohibit Send and Receive Quota: This is the hard limit for a mailbox. Once this quota is reached, users are blocked from sending or receiving new emails. They must reduce the mailbox size by deleting or archiving items to regain email functionality.
To configure that, you can use any of the below methods:
Option 1: Configure Mailbox Quotas using Admin Centre
You can set the Mailbox Quotas on Exchange Server 2019 easily from the Admin Centre. To achieve that, sign in to the Exchange Server Admin Center and navigate to the recipients tab.
Once here, select the desired user and click the edit icon. Navigate to the mailbox usage tab on the left pane.
Once here, click on more options to configure the Mailbox Quotas.
Now check the box to Customize the quota settings then provide the desired size for each item.
Option 2: Configure Mailbox Quotas using PowerShell
Another option for setting the Mailbox Quotas on Exchange Server 2019 is using PowerShell. For this method, open PowerShell and issue the command below to launch the Exchange Management Shell;
LaunchEMS Once launched, you can view the current Quota settings:
Get-Mailbox | Select Name,IssueWarningQuota,ProhibitSendQuota,ProhibitSendReceiveQuota,UseDatabaseQuotaDefaults Sample Output:
For this demo, I will configure the quota for Test User specifying all the values as we did using the admin centre:
Set-Mailbox -Identity "Test User" `
-IssueWarningQuota 3gb `
-ProhibitSendQuota 3.5gb `
-ProhibitSendReceiveQuota 4gb `
-UseDatabaseQuotaDefaults $FalseOnce the changes have been made, view them with the command;
Get-Mailbox "Test User" | Select Name,IssueWarningQuota,ProhibitSendQuota,ProhibitSendReceiveQuota,UseDatabaseQuotaDefaults Sample Output:
2. Configure In-Place Archives on Exchange Server 2019
In-Place Archives on Exchange Server offer users the capability to store older email data separately from their primary mailbox within the same Exchange environment. This feature enables efficient retention and retrieval of historical emails, reducing clutter in the primary mailbox while ensuring data preservation and compliance.
For this, I will also demonstrate two ways of enabling it.
Option 1: Enable In-Place Archives using Admin Centre
To enable the In-Place Archives on Exchange Server 2019 using the Admin Centre, navigate to servers->databases
Once here, add a new database to be used for archives by clicking the edit icon. Provide the required details and mount it.
Restart the Exchange server and the database will be available as shown:
To enable In-Place Archives select recipients->Mailboxes
Select the desired mailbox for which you want to enable the In-Place Archives. Set the database to store archives and click ok.
Now the user will have the In-Place Archive enabled, on their email as shown.
Option 2: Enable In-Place Archives using PowerShell
You can also enable this feature using PowerShell. Run PowerShell with elevated privileges then launch the Exchange Management Shell with the command:
LaunchEMSStart by creating a database for the archives:
New-MailboxDatabase -Server exchange-server -Name "Archive Database 001" `
-EdbFilePath "C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\Mailbox\Archive Database\Archive Database 001.edb" `
-LogFolderPath "C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\V15\Mailbox\Archive Database"Once created, mount the database with the command:
Mount-Database "Archive Database 001"
Get-MailboxDatabase Sample Output:
Restart the exchange server:
Restart-Service MSExchangeIS Now enable In-Place Archives for the desired user, say Test User, with the command:
Enable-Mailbox "Test User" -Archive -ArchiveDatabase "Archive Database 001" Verify the changes:
Get-Mailbox "Test User" | Select Name,ArchiveDatabase Sample Output:
You can then test the connectivity to the archive DB with the command:
Test-ArchiveConnectivity -UserSmtp [email protected] Sample Output:
You can view the users for which In-Place Archives is disabled:
Get-Mailbox -Filter "Name -NotLike 'DiscoverySearchMailbox*' -AND ArchiveDatabase -Eq `$null" | Select Name,ArchiveDatabase Sample Output:
You can also enable In-Place Archives for all users with the single command:
Get-Mailbox -Filter "Name -NotLike 'DiscoverySearchMailbox*' -AND ArchiveDatabase -Eq `$null" | Enable-Mailbox -Archive -ArchiveDatabase "Archive Database 001" To disable In-Place Archives for a user say Test User, use:
Disable-Mailbox "Test User" -Archive 3. Set Retention Policies on Exchange Server 2019
Retention Policies on Exchange Server 2019 are a set of rules and settings that govern the lifecycle and management of email messages and other mailbox items. These policies help organizations maintain data integrity, meet regulatory compliance requirements, and streamline the management of email retention and deletion.
You can set the retention Policies on Exchange Server 2019 using two methods:
Option 1: Set Retention Policies using PowerShell
You can set the required Retention Policies on Exchange Server 2019 using PowerShell.But to set Move To Archive policy, you need to have In-Place Archive enabled first.
Launch Powershell with admin privilege and start the Exchange Management Shell:
LaunchEMSView the default available policies:
Get-RetentionPolicy Sample output:
View the default retention policy tags:
Get-RetentionPolicyTag | Format-Table -AutoSize -Wrap Sample output:
Normally, the default retention policy is not applied by default. But if you have the in-place archive folder enabled, then the default retention policy is applied automatically.
View if retention policy is enabled for a user:
Get-Mailbox "Test" | Select Name,ArchiveDatabase,RetentionPolicy
Get-Mailbox "Klinsmann" | Select Name,ArchiveDatabase,RetentionPolicy Sample Output:
Now, we will create two new retention policies tags specifying all the required parameters.
New-RetentionPolicyTag -Name "2 Year Delete" -Type All -AgeLimitForRetention 730 -RetentionAction DeleteAndAllowRecovery
New-RetentionPolicyTag -Name "3 Month move to Archive" -Type All -AgeLimitForRetention 90 -RetentionAction MoveToArchive Now we can create new policies and link them to the tags.
New-RetentionPolicy "My Delete Policy" -RetentionPolicyTagLinks "2 Year Delete"
New-RetentionPolicy "My Archive Policy" -RetentionPolicyTagLinks "3 Month move to Archive" View the created policies and tags:
Get-RetentionPolicy
Get-RetentionPolicyTag | Format-Table -AutoSize -Wrap Sample output:
You can then apply these policies to the users. For example:
##For User Test User
Set-Mailbox "Test" -RetentionPolicy "My Delete Policy"
Start-ManagedFolderAssistant -Identity "Test"
##For User John Doe
Set-Mailbox "John" -RetentionPolicy "My Archive Policy"
Start-ManagedFolderAssistant -Identity "John" View the made changes:
Get-Mailbox -Filter "Name -NotLike 'DiscoverySearchMailbox*'" | Select Name,ArchiveDatabase,RetentionPolicy Sample Output:
Option 2: Set Retention Policies using Admin Centre
To set the retention Policies on Exchange Server 2019 Using Admin Centre navigate to compliance management. While here, it is possible to manage the different retention policy tags.
You can also view the available policies.
To create and use a policy, we need to create a retention policy tag first.
Proceed and create the desired policy tag.
Then create a retention policy using the tag. For the purposes of this demonstration, I will create a one day retention policy to be used for testing. You can create your own desired policy.
Once created, you can set the policy for a user. First, navigate to the user’s settings for Mailbox and make changes as shown below under mailbox features:
You can now apply the policy:
Test Retention Policies on Exchange Server 2019
You can then test the Retention Policies on Exchange Server 2019. For example, if the Delete And Allow Recovery policy is applied and the messages are moved to Deleted items after the folder expires, you can recover them at Deleted items->Recover deleted items
The set policy can also be viewed in the inbox once emails are received. For example, the user below has a 2 year Delete policy applied
If the Move To Archive policy is applied and in-place archive folder is enabled and the messages are deleted after the folder expires, you can recover them here.
Verdict
In conclusion, this guide has provided valuable insights into configuring mailbox quotas, archives, and retention policies on Exchange Server 2019. By understanding and effectively implementing these features, organizations can optimize their email management processes, enhance collaboration, ensure data integrity, and meet regulatory compliance requirements. I hope this was informative.
See more:
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