Use the Exchange dumpster for long-term data retention at your own risk
Microsoft has made incremental changes to the way the Exchange Server “dumpster” works, adding
to the length of time data can be stored there. Now, some IT pros use the Exchange dumpster for
long-term data retention, but that can lead to serious issues.
For those not familiar with the dumpster, it's the part of the Exchange message store that
retains deleted messages for a designated period of time, allowing them to be recovered when the
need arises.
In Exchange
Server 2003, Exchange 2007 and Exchange
2010, the dumpster default retention windows vary, but the retention window is
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This was first published in August 2011
also
configurable in every version. For example, in
Exchange
2003, the default value is only seven days, but it’s 14 days in Exchange 2007. This increase is
a reflection of the increased amount of processing power and storage available to the average
Exchange administrator.
Exchange Server 2010 featured a fairly radical
redesign of the dumpster system. It was reborn as a folder named Recoverable Items that
is indexed and discoverable, and dumpster data stays within the attendant mailbox rather than in a
folder. Items manually removed from the dumpster by an end user are moved into a Purges
folder, which has its own administrator-set retention
policy.
Repurposing the Exchange dumpster
Regardless of the version, most folks who run Exchange use the dumpster to recover items that were
deleted by accident. However, in companies that have legal compliance obligations -- such as Sarbanes-Oxley -- the
dumpster may also be used as an all-purpose perpetual retention system.
I asked a number of fellow Exchange experts, "Does it make sense to use the dumpster as a
compliance tool by enabling perpetual retention?"
The answer was a resounding "No."
The problem with using the dumpster as an infinite storage basket is that it causes data stores
to balloon. This drives up the cost
of the storage necessary to hold the data stores themselves and it also makes backing up and
restoring problematic. Turning the dumpster into a compliance mechanism may seem convenient in the
short-term, but over the long haul it creates more problems than it could ever solve.
Most admins I polled agreed that the best long-term e-discovery solution is an actual archive
product. The products most often recommended were Metalogix PAM
and Symantec’s Enterprise Vault .
Both tools allow the Exchange store to retain messages for a reasonable amount of time -- 120 days,
or maybe 180 if you really need it -- and have the rest packed away separately.
Point-in-time backups of the whole system that can be stored offline also help. That said, those
backups need to be taken across an interval shorter than the dumpster retention period to be
useful for e-discovery.
In short, any attempts to support legal discovery and compliance should be done using a full
product whose sole purpose is just that.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Serdar Yegulalp has been writing about computers and IT for more than 15 years for a variety of
publications, including SearchWinIT.com, SearchExchange.com, InformationWeek and Windows magazine.
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