Configurations for Exchange Mailbox Plans

Exchange Mailbox plans determine:

How messages are archived.
How messages are stubbed and cleaned up.
How messages are deleted from the Exchange server.
How long messages are retained on the MediaAgent.
Whether messages are content indexed.

You can:

For the User Mailbox, assign the same plans to all the mailboxes within a database or Active Directory group.
Assign plans to individual mailboxes or to multiple mailboxes after they have been associated with the subclient.
Change the plans that are assigned to mailboxes after the mailboxes have been associated with the subclient.

When you change a plan, the plan is applied the next time the corresponding job runs.

Types of Exchange Mailbox Plans

The following table describes the Exchange Mailbox plans.

Plan type	Description
User mailbox Applies to: User Mailbox	This plan determines the following: The archiving and content indexing criteria. How the data is protected. Whether messages should be stubbed or deleted, and whether messages are removed from the Exchange server after they are stubbed. How long messages remain on the MediaAgent. Retention is based on the message's received time.
Journal mailbox Applies to: Journal Mailbox and ContentStore Mailbox	This plan determines the following: What happens to journaled messages after they are archived and if they are content indexed. How long messages remain on the MediaAgent. Retention is based on the message's received time.

Plan type

Description

User mailbox

Applies to: User Mailbox

This plan determines the following:

The archiving and content indexing criteria.
How the data is protected.
Whether messages should be stubbed or deleted, and whether messages are removed from the Exchange server after they are stubbed.
How long messages remain on the MediaAgent. Retention is based on the message's received time.

Journal mailbox

Applies to: Journal Mailbox and ContentStore Mailbox

This plan determines the following:

What happens to journaled messages after they are archived and if they are content indexed.
How long messages remain on the MediaAgent. Retention is based on the message's received time.

Important

The Exchange Mailbox uses the retention rules that are defined in the Exchange plan, and does not use the retention rules that are defined in the server plan.
You can configure message-level retention based on the message's deletion time. This option is recommended for backup use case and is applicable for Exchange Online and Exchange On-Premise configuration using Exchange Web Services.
Any changes to the archiving rules could cause the next incremental backup to include all messages like a full backup would do so.

Nested Active Directory Groups

Applies to: User Mailbox

In the case of nested AD groups, plans that are assigned to the parent AD group are inherited by all of the child AD groups up to a maximum of 100 AD groups deep. Any AD groups that are deeper than 100 AD groups must have the plan applied manually. We recommend that you use AD groups that do not have child AD groups, or that have only a few child AD groups.

Plans that are assigned to a child AD group later are inherited by the AD groups below that node. Plans that are assigned to a child AD group take precedence over the plans that were assigned to the parent AD group previously.

Archiving, Cleanup, and Content Indexing Jobs

What is archived, cleaned up, and content indexed depends on what type of mailbox you have configured. Messages in the User Mailbox are archived, cleaned up, and content indexed based on the criteria in the user mailbox plan. Messages in the Journal Mailbox and the ContentStore Mailbox are archived, cleaned up, and content indexed based on the rules in the journal mailbox plan.

Retention

The index server is scanned every 24 hours. Messages that are eligible for data aging based on their received time and the rules defined in the plans are pruned from the MediaAgent.

Conflicts Between Retention Rules

Applies to: User Mailbox

A user mailbox's retention setting might be overwritten when another user mailbox plan is associated with the mailbox at the user, database, or Active Directory group level. However, the retention setting will only be overwritten if the user mailbox plan has a longer retention time than the existing plan.