From few weeks I was reading about Exchange 2010 archiving and I thought of blogging about it to summarize what we can do with Exchange 2010 Archiving and what is the advantage from using it.

Why Archive E-Mail:

1. As data volume grows inside the mailboxes, outlook performance starts to decrease
2. Archiving helps in eliminating PSTs. Let’s not forget that PSTs also add to further performance/management issues and adds lot of challenges to compliance and discovery
3. Manual retrieval cost for old data can be huge (backup tapes, PSTs, etc...)
4. PSTs are accessible on local machine only
5. PSTs can be easily corrupted “can be a big issue without a backup”
6. Lost laptop results in exposure of PSTs content

Exchange 2010 Archiving features:

1. Secondary Personal Archive. It acts as a secondary mailbox node. The archiving mailbox must be in the same database hosting the primary mailbox
2. Controlled Retention Policies. It provides integrated retention policies on the folder/item level
3. Multi Mailbox Search. Delegated non-IT compliance officers, HR, legal, etc... Can do a legal multi-mailbox search using a role-based GUI. Search can be filtered using multi criteria such as sender, receiver, expiry policy, message size, IRM protected items, etc...
4. Legal Hold. Suspected mailbox can be put on legal hold to be included in a multi-mailbox search. Users can be notified in their outlook that their mailbox is under legal hold.
5. Ease of Access. Appears alongside a user's primary mailbox in outlook or outlook web access
6. Easy PST Migration. Supported drag & drop for PSTs to the personal archive for easy migration of existing PSTs
7. Controlled Quota. Archive quota can be set separately from primary mailbox
8. Retention Policies Integration. Mail in primary mailbox can be moved to the archive through integrated retention policies.

Advantage of Archive:

1. Compliance & Discovery. PSTs are difficult to be discovered by IT administrators. With Archiving it's possible for data discovery and legal hold for all mailbox content
2. Data Protection. With PSTs it is very complex to protect the data inside the PSTs by the company backup system. With Archiving all mailbox content can be protected by the backup system.
3. Quota Management. Previously users were forced to keep track on their quota and move data to their PSTs. Archiving allow for large mailboxes and for automatic archiving to the old data to the archive mailbox.
4. Reduced Cost. No additional licenses required, it's a part of the Exchange 2010 ECAL
5. Multi Storage Options. With Exchange 2010 & archiving you can host your data on DAS-SATA storage architecture to reduce storage costs

So looking to the above, I can say that for most of the organizations who will be looking for getting rid of PSTs and giving large mailboxes for their users, Exchange 2010 Archiving will be your arm to do that.