Original article link:
http://www.falconitservices.com/support/KB/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=146
Small Business Server 2011 (Exchange 2010) allows you to create up to 4 mailbox stores. Not only can you create multiple mailboxes to control their overall size, but you can also create a separate mailbox for archiving. This blog post will demonstrate how to create an Archive mailbox and how to create a retention policy that users must adhere to.
We will create our retention policy to move e-mails that are older than 2 years into the Archive mailbox and we will create a retention policy that keeps archived e-mails for an indefinite period.
How to Create an Additional Exchange 2010 Archive Mailbox
Log in to your Small Business Server and open the Exchange Management Console. Navigate to Organization Configuration > Mailboxes. In the actions pane, click on new mailbox database.
Give your archive database a friendly name and select the server that will host it.
Select a database and log folder path or use the default. Place a checkmark on the mount database option.
Click on the new button to create the database, then finish when completed. Your new database will shortly appear under the database management tab.
How to Create an Exchange 2010 Retention Policy
Click on the retention policy tags tab and in the actions pane click new retention policy tag.
Give your retention tag a friendly name and select all folders in the mailbox for the tag type. In the age limit, select 730 days (2 years) and in the action to take, select move to archive. Click new to create the tag.
Click on the retention policies tab and then on the new retention policy link in the action pane.
Give your retention policy a friendly name. Click on the green plus button to add our tags to the policy.
Add the policy tag we previously created as well as the default policy never delete.
Click next and then new to create the retention policy.
How to Add Existing Users to the Exchange 2010 Retention Policy
To add users and mailboxes to the retention policy, navigate to recipient configuration > mailbox. Right click on the user’s mailbox and select enable archive.
Select the archive mailbox as the target mailbox store where the archive mailbox will be created.
How to Add New Users to the Exchange 2010 Retention Policy
Create new users and mailboxes as you normally would. Manually select the user’s mailbox and retention policy in the mailbox settings dialog box.
In the archive settings dialog box, manually select the archive database.
E-mails older than 2 years old will be moved to the archive folder. The archive folder will appear both in your Outlook as well as in your Webmail.
Caveat: Unless you have an enterprise version, the On-Line archives may not appear in Outlook. It will however, always appear in Webmail.
