Remove former user mailboxes - methodoloy?

[Osiris]

Hi all,

We have a fair few former employees mailboxes left on our exchange (Exchange 03), I am thinking now is a good time to do something about it.

I was just going to exmerge/fully backup their mailbox to pst, place that in their HR Folder and delete the mailbox from exchange. It appears to have worked on the test subject.

That enables the people with the correct permissions to open that pst file should a need arise in the future and as such allow me to get them off the exchange. Seems this will work but exchange can be an engimatic beast so any downsides or the best practise methods other people use I should know about?

Thanks in advance,

Osiris

[Joel]

If you're keeping the data anyway, why remove the mailbox?

[LiqHead]

1

[Osiris]

Thats a fair point and I have no answer for you other than seems pointless to just leave it on the exchange. Some of the mailboxes are quite large due to their being no restrictions on sizes previously, and removing them and just having them in pst format seems the easiest way for the HR person/Boss to access those mailboxes if it should arise in the future.

Clearly I have no definitive argument for these actions, but from the lack of replies im guessing this undertaking will either be very silly or very straightforward.

[Skoey]

I export the mailbox of an ex-employee to a PST file using exmerge utility and store in on a backup server / file server

I then delete the users mailbox. If however another staff member requires all new mail from the ex-employee's email account to be forwarded onto them, i then do another step where i re-create the mailbox. Then in AD Users and Computers, under Exchange General tab, i set the ex-employee's email to forward to the other staff member. (un-ticking the box that says deliver email to both mailboxes).

Obviously this is just the way I do it, and is not necessarily the best or easiest way.

[Osiris]

Thanks for the replies all,

Cheers Ryath, thats one way I have seen it done. These employees have been gone for some time so forwarding shouldnt be an issue. Right or wrong its nice to see someone else doing it this way :)

[Joel]

A good reason to remove the mailbox would be if you were running out of space in your Exchange DB (ie, not Enterprise).

[Garry]

Another reason to remove it would be during the implementation or within an information lifecycle management policy.

In our organisation our main mailbox stores are on a SAN which is replicated in real time to our DR site. When a user leaves, their mailbox is moved to a different mailbox store hosted on a standard file server which is backed up weekly. After six months the mailbox is then PSTed and backed up to tape for long-term off-site storage. In order to access the data at that point, forms need to be filled in for the retrieval.

This policy helps keeps our storage costs down, ensures that only our most important live data is on the most expensive systems, that data we'd need first in a DR scenario is given precedence when being replicated and that access to archives is properly controlled. It also means that maintenance on the Exchange server (offline defrags, etc) is quicker and easier - and therefore cheaper.

I've mentioned cost there a few times and may sound like a cheapskate, but money saved in one area can then be utilised to improve an infrastructure making it more reliable, efficient, secure and resilient - which is what every systems admin and IT manager should aim to do.

[CrackerMac]

Depending on how licensing is, one may have to clean out old mailboxes to "make room" for the new employee. Anyone do this in Exchange 2007?

[IrfanL]

In Exchange, client licenses are based on per-user not per-mailbox. And in Exchange 2000 and later, there is one-to-one relationship between user account & mailbox. But we can disconnect a Mailbox from a user account and keep it in a Mailbox Store. This can be usefull if you have limited licenses and you want to keep the mailboxes of ex-users. But you will require to reconnect the mailbox to a user account before using it again.