Exchange policies determine:
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How messages are archived.
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How messages are stubbed and cleaned up.
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How messages are deleted from the Exchange server.
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How long messages are retained on the MediaAgent.
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Whether messages are content indexed.
You can:
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For the User Mailbox, assign the same policies to all the mailboxes within a database or Active Directory group.
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Assign policies to individual mailboxes or to multiple mailboxes after they have been associated with the subclient.
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Change the policies that are assigned to mailboxes after the mailboxes have been associated with the subclient.
When you change an archive, cleanup, or journal policy, the policy is applied the next time the corresponding job runs.
Types of Exchange Policies
The following table describes the Exchange policies.
Policy type |
Description |
---|---|
Archiving |
This policy determines the archiving and content indexing criteria. The archiving policy defines how the data is protected, but not whether messages are stubbed. Stubbing is defined by the cleanup policy. Important Any changes to the archiving rules could cause the next incremental backup to include all messages like a full backup would do so. |
Cleanup |
This policy determines whether messages should be stubbed or deleted, and whether messages are removed from the Exchange server after they are stubbed. |
Journal |
This policy determines what happens to journaled messages after they are archived and if they are content indexed. |
Retention |
Note This policy determines how long messages remain on the MediaAgent. Important:
|
Retention policies must be assigned when mailboxes are associated with the subclient. However, you can assign other types of policies to mailboxes at the time that they are associated with the subclient or later.
Exchange Policies and Mailbox Types
The following table describes which Exchange policies are applicable for each mailbox type.
Mailbox type |
Exchange policies |
---|---|
User Mailbox |
|
Journal Mailbox |
|
ContentStore Mailbox |
|
Nested Active Directory Groups
Applies to: User Mailbox
In the case of nested AD groups, policies that are assigned to the parent AD group are inherited by all of the child AD groups up to a maximum of 100 AD groups deep. Any AD groups that are deeper than 100 AD groups must have the policy applied manually. We recommend that you use AD groups that do not have child AD groups, or that have only a few child AD groups.
Policies that are assigned to a child AD group later are inherited by the AD groups below that node. Policies that are assigned to a child AD group take precedence over the policies that were assigned to the parent AD group previously.
Archiving, Cleanup, and Content Indexing Jobs
What is archived, cleaned up, and content indexed depends on what type of mailbox you have configured. Messages in the User Mailbox are archived, cleaned up, and content indexed based on the criteria in the archive and cleanup policies. Messages in the Journal Mailbox and the ContentStore Mailbox are archived, cleaned up, and content indexed based on the criteria in the journal policy.
Retention Policies
The index server is scanned every 24 hours. Messages that are eligible for data aging based on their received time and the criteria defined in the retention policy are pruned from the MediaAgent.
Conflicts Between Retention Policies
Applies to: User Mailbox
A user mailbox's retention policy might be overwritten when another retention policy is associated with the mailbox at the user, database, or Active Directory group level. However, the retention policy will only be overwritten if the newer policy has a longer retention time than the existing policy. When a newer retention policy is associated with a user mailbox, the archive and cleanup policies that correspond to that retention policy are also associated with the user mailbox.
For example:
UserMailbox is a part of DatabaseX, and is a member of ActiveDirectoryGroupY and ActiveDirectoryGroupZ.
DatabaseX is assigned the following Exchange policies:
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ArchivePolicy1
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CleanUpPolicy1
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RetentionPolicy1, retention time = 5 years
ActiveDirectoryGroupY is assigned the following Exchange policies:
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ArchivePolicy2
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CleanUpPolicy2
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RetentionPolicy2, retention time = 7 years
ActiveDirectoryGroupZ is assigned the following Exchange policies:
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ArchivePolicy1
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CleanUpPolicy2
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RetentionPolicy3, retention time = 10 years
In this case, the following Exchange policies are applied to UserMailbox:
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ArchivePolicy1
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CleanUpPolicy2
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RetentionPolicy3, retention time = 10 years