TDP EXCHANGE: Keeping a mailbox for ever

[romoj]

Hello fellow TSM'rs, I have been tasked with the following:

TSM Verion 6, Exchange 2010

Our current retention policies for Exchange is no limit (we keep everything for ever). Our DB is growing at increased rates. Legal says we may be able to change our retention policies if we can do the following:

If needed "freeze" the data backed up for a specific mailbox.

The question is how to do this without affecting all the DB on the Exchange server. I know we can send a specific DB to a different management class but that would still affect multiple mailboxes.

My suggestion is to have another Exchange server with it's own management class (no limit retention) and have the Exchange folks move or copy the mailbox to the new server/management class. But another question is what happens to the data already backed up? How do we keep that data from expiring?

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated...

 

[marclant]

Maybe one way to freeze/keep forever specific mailboxes as needed is to export these particular mailboxes to a .PST file, and either backup or archive those files and retain forever.

 

[romoj]

That's a good point! Hadn't thought of that. Let me discuss that. Thanks!

 

[romoj]

So here's the problem. If we have retention policies and legal comes and says to freeze all data including backups what do we do? A pst would just be a point in time. But if legal doesn't know what date they need but they dont want backups to expire. What do we do? I wouldn want to move the whole server or evena whole databse to another domain.

 

[Mita201]

TDP for exchange is not right tool for the purpose - it is more like backup utility that protect your Exchange databases for a reasonable time to make possible to restore mails/mailboxes/databbases if they fails, being deleted etc. If you are going to archive every single backup, you will have to spend a lot of money on storage, licenses etc.
More optimal would be to get some mail archiving solution, to make mail archives, and use tdp for regular backups.

 

[romoj]

Yes probably true. One option I was thinking was exporting the node specifically the database where the user was located to another server to a different domain. I don't even know if this is possible and the problem is you would also be moving all the other users within that database...

 

[SniperKing]

Hi,

If the legal need to apply the forever hold to existing backup too, just create another domain with the exact management class name with nolimit retention. And then move the node to the new domain and redefine all the schedules.
If the retention only apply to specific mailbox only from the date of announcement, you may make a new management class with nolimit (e.g. legal) and do something on the OPT file to 'include "xxxx\xxxx legal", so the next backup will rebind all active copy to the new management class on specific mailbox.

Once legal told it's done for the hold, just move it backup to the original domain / remove the include statement in the opt file.


But I believe exporting the exchange database into an archival format is a better choice, TDP exchange aims for fast recovery. And there's no backup software can actually solve forever retention shit from legal request, as they dun understand drastic growth of data for such hold. (may be san level, archiving tier, which cash spend is the solution)

 

[moon-buddy]

So here's the problem. If we have retention policies and legal comes and says to freeze all data including backups what do we do? A pst would just be a point in time. But if legal doesn't know what date they need but they dont want backups to expire. What do we do? I wouldn want to move the whole server or evena whole databse to another domain.

I believe this is a question of semantics.

If Legal or Audit comes to me says "Freeze the data backup" truly this means a point in time HOLD of any data. Thus PST backups of ALL mail stores would suffice as you can recover messages at any point before, and up to the point of the freeze.

Where will you store it? Export it to another server - a file server with a pre-defined location - and backup or archive the data. I have done this technique years ago and saved the company from a disaster when the Exchange Admin deleted the Exchange LOG because of space issue. I cannot restore the Exchange DB (using TDP) from the last FULL backup since the most recent LOG backup was gone.

the PST backups saved the day.