Delete user account with mailbox

[cc929]

Hi All,

We have 2003DC & exch2003 servers. When we hae to delete a user, we will delete at the 2003DC active directory and also delete mailbox at the same time. After we delete the user account, that user's mailbox is still in the exch2003. I can't purge this mailbox until next day. It is OK for me to purge this mailbox next day but my daily backup will failed because the backup program is unable to find the directory for this mailbox.
Does anyone know how to delete user account & mailbox at the same time or someone can show me the procedure how to delete user account with mailbox together?

many thanks in advance!

cc929

 

[Spirit]

Its the retention period that is causing the issue.

If your SURE its safe to delete i.e. a manager won't say tomorrow I need an email from X's mailbox then fine purge it.

Or you could excluded the mailbox from your backup selections.

If you're using veritas you could change the registry to not recognise this as a fail.

Your doing it right by the sounds of it, its this way by design to stop slip of the fingers....

Iain

 

[cc929]

Hi Spirit,

Thanks for your help!

Is this a normal procedure to delete user account?
Delete user account from AD today then delete mailbox tomorrow!

Please advise!

Thanks
cc929

 

[58sniper]

You shouldn't be excluding some mailboxes from backup because you shouldn't be backing up the mailboxes. You should be backing up the Information Store - not the mailboxes.

Pat Richard, MCSE MCSA:Messaging CNA
Microsoft Exchange MVP
Want to know how email works? Read for yourself -

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2821.txt

 

[Titleist]

58sniper,

Unless you're doing a weekly bricklevel backup. Veritas spits out errors if the mailbox is not removed from the backup selections.

John

 

[Davetoo]

What Pat is saying is you shouldn't be doing bricklevel backups of Exchange mailboxes at all, but rather backing up just the IS.

I'm Certifiable, not cert-ified.
It just means my answers are from experience, not a book.
The poster formerly known as lander215

 

[58sniper]

Correct. Brick level backups are evil.

Pat Richard, MCSE MCSA:Messaging CNA
Microsoft Exchange MVP
Want to know how email works? Read for yourself -

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2821.txt

 

[Titleist]

58sniper,

I've got to ask..why are brick level backups so evil? We do a daily backup of the IS and flush the logs but we also do a weekly brick level. It's way easier to restore an individual email from a brick level than having to restore a 70gb IS to retrieve 1 email. Look forward to your thoughts.

John

 

[monsterjta]

cc929,

Is this a normal procedure to delete user account?
Delete user account from AD today then delete mailbox tomorrow!

There is a retention period for the mailbox after the account has been deleted from AD. I believe the default is 30 days. After that time, Exchange will purge the mailbox. If you run the cleanup agent on the mailbox store, you'll see that the mailbox is marked for deletion.

Hope This Helps,

Good Luck!

 

[Davetoo]

If you set your retention period correctly, the brick level backup is completely unnecessary. My IS is set to retain deleted items for seven days...that way the user can go in and recover the email they deleted themselves and I don't have to be involved at all.

Way better solution than brick levels.

I'm Certifiable, not cert-ified.
It just means my answers are from experience, not a book.
The poster formerly known as lander215

 

[Titleist]

Davetoo,

Unless the user does a shift+delete. That bypasses the deleted items so retenetion won't work...Been there and been burned by it. Hence, the brick levels.

John