Microsoft Exchange Server Email Archiving Options Compared

Find the right archiving solution for your business

The need for email archiving has long-been a need for many organizations running Microsoft Exchange Server on-premises or Hosted Exchange. There are several reasons for this, such as minimizing the amount of mailbox data that needs to be backed up on a regular basis or establishing long-term retention of email for legal, compliance or regulatory reasons.

There are various options for email archiving and different aspects that you should consider. Should you use the native email archiving capabilities Microsoft is offering, or should you look for a third-party provider? Learn more about the different possible methods of email archiving in our white paper.

The archiving options for Microsoft Exchange Server

We’ll look at the archiving of Microsoft Exchange from a number of technical and business considerations and compare the following three possible methods:

Method 1 – Outlook AutoArchive (PST)

Outlook has long supported the ability to export contents of an Exchange mailbox into a portable archive file. While only having the limited functionality of a structured database file, Outlook Archives have been used to assist in archiving, backups and even migrations.

Method 2 – Exchange In-Place-Archiving

Microsoft Exchange offers the possibility of in-place archiving (also called in-situ archiving), for users to manage their archiving themselves. The archive mailbox is an additional mailbox that must be enabled for a user’s primary mailbox. The archive mailbox is accessible in specific Outlook clients and via Outlook on the web. This capability is specifically designed to help address archiving, but with a limited scope of functionality.

Method 3 – External Archiving Using a Third-Party Solution

Microsoft Exchange Server supports external email archiving solutions to address archiving needs beyond the basic functionality supported by the previous two methods. Solutions on the market today can be completely software-based (whether traditional software or a virtual appliance, either utilizing your infrastructure), leverage their own hardware for storage and compute or be provided as a cloud-based service.

Archiving Considerations

This white paper will utilize the following seven aspects of archiving as the basis for comparing the previously mentioned three possible methods:

1. Pricing
2. Archiving Strategy
3. Compliance
4. Storage
5. Archive Redundancy
6. Archive Access
7. Archive Mobility