Email Retention Policy

[lesleint]

Being that I have only worked in 3 different places and the email retention at each place was non existent I was wanting some input from some other Exchange Admin's on what they are using for a policy and why you came to that conclusion. Thnaks for you help.

 

[georgesz]

First reason:

If you have Exchange 2000 Standard, your database will dismount when it reached 16 GB in size, and it will take you a LONG time to run an offline defragmentation on the database, delete mail, then run an offline defrag again. Or, buy Enterprise Edition for a lot more money.

Second reason: some users will NEVER delete anything, even in their Deleted Items folder (they use it as an archive). The bigger your database gets, the longer it will take you to recover from a disaster. So the way to

You can set up a Mailbox Manager Recipient policy to delete Deleted Items bigger than certain size after 30 days or whatever is good for you.

Probably a better solution is to set Mailbox Size limits, and then the users have to deal with the problem themselves. Most likely the only email you want to delete automatically is Deleted Items, as deleting other mail could get you fired.

Georgesz