I had written about the Exchange Server 2010 SP1 enhancements sometime in April when they were announced. One of the much awaited enhancement was a separate database for Personal Archive (mailbox).  So what used to happen in Exchange Server 2010 RTM, archive mailbox was on mailbox database as user’s primary mailbox. Personal Archive used to move with Primary Mailbox during a mailbox move. Now in Exchange Server 2010 SP1 we finally can have the Personal Archive in a separate mailbox database (if needed). I had written about more features here…

Let us have a look at new options that are provided for creating/enabling Personal Archives for New and Existing Mailboxes…

For New Mailbox: While creating a new user, on the Archive Settings dialog box, select the option “Create a local Archive”

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Also, now you have the option to select the database for the Personal Archive. Click on Browse and select the appropriate mailbox database.

Note: We also have the option of a Remote Hosted Archive, that would mean we can choose to have Primary mailbox on Premise and Archive Mailbox on BPOS, if we have that environment. Another point to note that BPOS still is on Exchange Server 2007 and and an upgrade to Exchange Server 2010 is expected soon. So BPOS as an option for Personal Archive right now I have not tested and am not sure :-). 

The same can be achieved via EMS for creating a new user with an Archive on a separate mailbox database “DB2-Arch”, while keeping primary mailbox on “”DB1-MBX”

New-Mailbox -Name ‘Anil Bhatia’ -Alias ‘abhatia’ -UserPrincipalName ‘abhatia@quest-demo.com’ -FirstName ‘Anil’ -LastName ‘Bhatia’ -SamAccountName ‘abhatia’  -ResetPasswordOnNextLogon $false -Database ‘DB1-MBX’ -Archive -ArchiveDatabase ‘DB2-Arch’

So, now we have created 2 users Amit Tank and Anil Bhatia with Archives.

Note: Every Primary Mailbox can have only one Personal Archive.

 

Enabling Personal Archive for Existing Mailbox: On an existing mailbox user in EMC right click and select Enable Archive

Select the option “Choose a specific mailbox database rather than selecting one automatically” and click browse to select the appropriate Mailbox Database for Personal Archive

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The same can be achieved using EMS with the command: Enable-Mailbox “UserName” -Archive

There is lot more good news, like using Outlook 2007 for accessing Personal Archive. Importing PST directly into Personal Archive and changes like default Quota for Personal Archives.

We will discuss more of these soon…..

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