Compared Email Archiving Options for Microsoft Exchange Server
Are you using Microsoft Exchange Server and looking to securely and long-term archive your emails? Find the most suitable archiving solution for your business. Here's what you can expect: An overview of Microsoft Exchange archiving options, A comparison of archiving methods according to seven criteria, and expert knowledge on email archiving with Exchange Server.
Find the Right Archiving Solution for Your Business
Email archiving has long been a need for many organizations that run Microsoft Exchange Server or Hosted Exchange within their company. There are various reasons for this need, such as minimizing the amount of mailbox data that needs to be backed up regularly or ensuring emails are stored for a long time due to legal, compliance, or regulatory reasons.
There are various options and different aspects to consider for email archiving. Should you use Microsoft's local email archiving features or look for a third-party provider? Learn more about different possible email archiving methods in our technical review.
Archiving Options for Microsoft Exchange Server
We will look at archiving for Microsoft Exchange from several technical and operational angles and compare the following three possible methods:
Method 1 - Outlook Automatic Archiving (PST)
Outlook has long supported the feature of transferring the contents of an Exchange mailbox to a portable archive file. Although it has only limited functionality compared to a structured database file, Outlook Archives have been used for archiving, backup, and even migrations.
Method 2 - Exchange In-Place Archiving
Microsoft Exchange provides the ability for users to manage their own archiving, known as in-place archiving. The archive mailbox is an additional mailbox that must be enabled for the user's primary mailbox. The archive mailbox can be accessed from specific Outlook clients and via Outlook on the Web. This feature is specifically designed to help with archiving, but it has limited functionality.
Method 3 - External Archiving Using a Third-Party Solution
Microsoft Exchange Server supports external email archiving solutions to meet archiving needs beyond the basic functions supported by the previous two methods. Today's solutions can be entirely software-based (whether traditional software or a virtual device that uses your infrastructure), they can use their own hardware for storage and processing, or they can be provided as a cloud-based service.
Considerations for Archiving
This technical document will use the following seven aspects of archiving to compare the three possible methods mentioned earlier:
- Pricing
- Archiving Strategy
- Compliance
- Storage
- Archive Backup
- Archive Access
- Archive Mobility
Source: Guide: Email Archiving with Microsoft Exchange Server (mailstore.com)