Exchange Server Archiver - 3.0

Exchange Server Archiver

Learning Exchange Server Archiver - 3.0

Using multiple Archive Stores

This topic describes how you can use multiple Archive Stores to:

For information about multiple stores architecture, see About Archive Stores.

Mimic your Exchange store structure

You may want to set up multiple Archive Stores so that they mirror the stores in Exchange, simply for familiarity.

For example, if your Exchange Server stores are organized by mailbox name, such as 'A to M' and 'N to Z', you could set up a Storage Service with two Archive Stores. You would then create two archive rules - one to archive mailboxes A to M to the first Archive Store, and the other to archive mailboxes N to Z to the second Archive Store.

Manage Archive Store size

If you archive a lot of mailboxes, or if the messages and attachments that you archive are large, you may want to set up multiple Archive Stores to keep the size of the individual stores manageable.

Also, when an Archive Store reaches a certain size, you may want to stop archiving to it and create a new Archive Store. You can then make the old Archive Store read-only so that users can access the archived messages, but no further messages can be archived to it.

You may want to keep your Archive Stores small for the following reasons:

  • Smaller Archive Stores may be more convenient when you schedule your backups.

    If you have multiple active Archive Stores, you can stagger the backups of the individual Archive Stores, rather than backing up one large store.

    If you have read-only stores, you can perform a final full backup on these stores and remove them from your backup schedule; you need only back up the active stores.

    For more information, see Backing up Archive Stores.

  • Smaller active Archive Stores can mean cheaper storage.

    If a read-only Archive Store contains very old messages that are not frequently accessed, you could move the store to cheaper storage with no noticeable impact on your end users.

  • Smaller Archive Stores are easier to manage.

    For example, if you have a failover system that means you copy the Archive Stores to another location, only the active Archive Stores need to be copied regularly.

    The read-only Archive Stores can be copied once, and do not need to be copied again.

To make an Archive Store read-only:

  1. Use the Archive Rules tab to ensure that any rules that are set up to use the store are changed to archive to a new store.
  2. On the Maintenance tab, right-click the store and click Properties, and then select the Make store read-only check box.

Note that you cannot make a store writeable once you have made it read-only.

Optimize performance

You can improve performance by setting up different Archive Stores on different disks. The Archive Stores can be hosted by the same Storage Service if they are all on the same server.

You can also improve performance by setting up Storage Services on different servers, but note that you are recommended to install each Storage Service on the same server as the Archive Stores that it hosts. (There may be some exceptions; for example, if you create an Archive Store on a NAS (network attached storage) unit, the Storage Service is installed on a different computer - see Archiving to external storage.)

Decommission an Archive Store

You may want to use multiple Archive Stores to enable you to 'decommission' an old Archive Store so that messages can no longer be archived to it, or so that the archived messages in the Archive Store cannot be accessed at all.

For more information, see Decommissioning an Archive Store.

Keywords: Archive Store, multiple stores, optimize, store size

See also

About Archive Stores

Creating new Archive Stores

Moving an Archive Store

Moving an Archive Store database

Archiving to external storage

Backing up and restoring Archive Stores

Decommissioning an Archive Store

Repairing and rebuilding Archive Stores

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