Office 365: Auto-Expanding Archives FAQ
Published Apr 09 2018 09:23 AM 155K Views

In recent months we’ve been receiving quite a few questions from customers regarding auto-expanding archives. I’d like to clear up some of the misconceptions and answer some of the most frequently asked questions we get on this subject. Think of this as a FAQ on the subject. Before we get going, I strongly advise folks to understand Message Records Management concepts like retention policies and tags. For example - there have been a few cases that we saw where customers enabled auto-expanding archives, but no archiving policies have been configured for the user.

What are auto-expanding archives?

It’s essentially a component that provides our customers the ability to grow their mailbox archives over the normal 100GB quota limit. Much of the core concepts are covered in Overview of unlimited archiving in Office 365 and Enable unlimited archiving in Office 365 - Admin Help. Let’s look at a simple picture to demonstrate this at a high level: The user’s primary mailbox has an archive mailbox (the main archive) associated with it. The main archive is expanded with additional storage as content is moved to the archive mailbox either by the user or as part of an archival policy on the mailbox.

What are the licensing requirements for auto-expanding archives?

Auto-expanding archives are supported under the following service plans (EDU organizations included):
  • Exchange Online Plan 2
  • Exchange Online Archiving addon
  • Office 365 Enterprise E3/E5
The above service plans contain the following capabilities we check on the mailbox:
  • BPOS_S_ArchiveAddOn,
  • BPOS_S_Archive,
  • BPOS_S_Enterprise

PS C:\> Get-Mailbox testing1|select PersistedCapabilities
PersistedCapabilities
---------------------
{BPOS_S_EquivioAnalytics, BPOS_S_CustomerLockbox, BPOS_S_Analytics, BPOS_S_Enterprise}

The supported recipient types are:
  • SharedMailbox, or
  • UserMailbox, or
  • MailUser

When can I expect the archive to expand?

We have a few values that we track on the Main Archive within this feature. The important value for our customers is essentially called the transition threshold. This is the size threshold of the main archive at which we will start provisioning new auxiliary archives (“Additional storage” in the illustration above) and start moving content from the main archive to the auxiliary archive. This threshold size is currently 90GB.

Why do I need to wait 30 days for expansion to take place?

This question comes up a lot and can be confusing, but technically, archives are expanded as soon as the managed folder assistant is able to successfully run on the main archive that has reached the transition size (90GB). The 30-day period is the retention period for data that has been moved from the main archive to the auxiliary archive. We call this data ghosted content within the archive mailbox location and we keep a copy for 30 days to provide us (and you) with a safety net in the service in case we run into any issues during the data move from main archive to the auxiliary archive. After that period expires we flush the data in the main archive to release the space.

Will the archive immediately expand when it reaches the threshold?

Expansion does not occur in real-time, in other words we only check if a mailbox should be expanded when managed folder assistant runs on the main archive. Managed folder assistant is expected to process the mailbox successfully within 7 days (it might be sooner depending on service load) or – you can initiate managed folder assistant on the main archive manually. The below is an example:

PS C:\> Get-Mailbox testing1|select -ExpandProperty MailboxLocations
1;b2b6421a-8bb0-4a91-9504-73cf42af570f;MainArchive;namprd00.prod.outlook.com;e4811b9b-4a10-4575-bb21-db3d32a9f4c2
1;df788e2e-cdaf-44fa-bc52-b7ef9f9bb40c;Primary;namprd00.prod.outlook.com;3128bfb0-76a7-4492-9de2-4924c8b8e443
1; ab7b6054-eab4-4ea4-bb71-58dc6c8bacc1;AuxArchive;namprd00.prod.outlook.com; 76d35997-4d27-402c-aa3e-ffcd3f898faf
PS C:\> Start-ManagedFolderAssistant b2b6421a-8bb0-4a91-9504-73cf42af570f

What happens if the archive has reached the quota limit and I enable auto-expansion?

In the past, if a mailbox under litigation hold was enabled for auto-expanding archive we would not increase the archive and recoverable items quotas above 100GB. We have seen many cases where customers would enable auto-expanding archives on a mailbox that has already reached the archive quota limit and expect expansion to occur immediately. This puts a lot of pressure on the mailbox since there isn't any buffer to allow the expansion to complete successfully. We have recently made some changes where we now increase the archive quota and recoverable items quota to 110GB if the mailbox is under litigation hold and auto-expanding archive is being enabled on the mailbox level. If you enabled auto-expanding at the org level and/or mailbox level prior to this change, but the archive and recoverable items quotas are still 100GB, you can re-enable auto-expanding archives on the mailbox to get the additional 10GB increase. This will have no other effect on the archive when you run Enable-Mailbox and any quotas above 110GB will not be affected. Let's look at a quick example of a mailbox under litigation hold that was enabled for auto-expanding archive prior to the change mentioned above:

PS C:\> Get-mailbox testing1|select archivequota,recoverableitemsquota
ArchiveQuota RecoverableItemsQuota
------------ ---------------------
100 GB (107,374,182,400 bytes) 100 GB (107,374,182,400 bytes)
PS C:\> enable-mailbox testing1 -AutoExpandingArchive
WARNING: Auto-expanding Archive is already enabled for 'testing1'.
Name Alias ServerName ProhibitSendQuota
---- ----- ---------- -----------------
Testing1 Testing1 co2pr00mb0198 99 GB (106,300,440,576 bytes)
PS C:\> get-mailbox testing1|select archivequota,recoverableitemsquota
ArchiveQuota RecoverableItemsQuota
------------ ---------------------
110 GB (118,111,600,640 bytes) 110 GB (118,111,600,640 bytes)

As you can see, after re-enabling auto-expanding archive, the quotas received an additional 10GB increase.

How do quotas work when a mailbox is enabled for auto-expanding archives?

Quotas seem to be a subject of confusion when auto-expanding archives are in the mix, so I want to focus a little bit on this topic. The Archive and Recoverable Items quotas are essentially ignored for the aggregate size of all locations for the archive. We do however, still utilize and enforce the archive and recoverable items quotas to ensure each mailbox location does not grow out of control; we essentially keep the size of each location within the quota threshold. If we look at the current mailbox example, each mailbox location for the archive (Main Archive and Aux Archive) will not grow past the Archive and Recoverable items quota limit which is set at 100GB and 30GB. But the aggregate size over all the auxiliary archives can go past the 100GB and 30GB values.

PS C:\> get-mailbox testing1 |select RecoverableItemsQuota,ArchiveQuota,ArchiveWarningQuota
RecoverableItemsQuota ArchiveQuota ArchiveWarningQuota
--------------------- ------------ -------------------
30 GB (32,212,254,720 bytes) 100 GB (107,374,182,400 bytes) 90 GB (96,636,764,160 bytes)

We don’t increase the recoverable items quota in this case since the mailbox is not on any hold and recoverable items are removed after the RetainDeletedItemsFor period (default 14 days). The behavior for customers that have mailboxes on litigation hold will be a little different. In this scenario we increase the recoverable items and archive quotas to 110GB as seen below at the mailbox level (not the organization level). The mailbox was on litigation hold prior to enabling auto-expanding archives on the mailbox, so we increased the quotas to 110GB for recoverable items and archive quotas.

PS C:\> Get-mailbox testing2 |select RecoverableItemsQuota,ArchiveQuota,ArchiveWarningQuota
RecoverableItemsQuota ArchiveQuota ArchiveWarningQuota
--------------------- ------------ -------------------
110 GB (118,111,600,640 bytes) 110 GB (118,111,600,640 bytes) 100 GB (107,374,182,400 bytes)

Now let’s look at the aggregate item size of a mailbox with quite a lot of data. Here we can see that the TotalDeletedItemSize is way above the 110GB recoverable items quota for the mailbox, so expansion is working great.

PS C:\> Get-mailbox TheWhale|select RecoverableItemsQuota,ArchiveQuota,ArchiveWarningQuota
RecoverableItemsQuota ArchiveQuota ArchiveWarningQuota
--------------------- ------------ -------------------
110 GB (118,111,600,640 bytes) 110 GB (118,111,600,640 bytes) 100 GB (107,374,182,400 bytes)
PS C:\> Get-MailboxStatistics TheWhale -Archive |select TotalItemSize,TotalDeletedItemSize
TotalItemSize TotalDeletedItemSize
------------- --------------------
393 GB (421,964,016,454 bytes) 724 GB (777,408,505,123 bytes)

Let’s look at TotalDeletedItemSize for the individual mailbox locations for the main archive and the auxiliary archive.

PS C:\> Get-MailboxStatistics e7d87e1c-b39f-493f-8e56-9d271d6d23ea |select TotalDeletedItemSize
TotalDeletedItemSize
--------------------
102.6 GB (110,125,981,616 bytes)

We can see that the main archive mailbox location is currently sitting at 102.6GB and below we see one of the auxiliary archives is at 53.75GB.

PS C:\> Get-MailboxStatistics 62928e39-bc01-4763-84f5-84ac314ea5e1 |select TotalDeletedItemSize
TotalDeletedItemSize
--------------------
53.75 GB (57,714,208,258 bytes)

This mailbox will get another auxiliary expansion location assigned to it soon and content will then start to move into that new location. The main archive in this mailbox also now contains 51.63GB of ghosted content that will be flushed within 30 days to release the space within the main archive. If you recall, we keep the content that we move to a new auxiliary location in the main archive for 30 days as a safety net. The most recent auxiliary archive provisioned for this mailbox was mailbox guid 62928e39-bc01-4763-84f5-84ac314ea5e1. Let’s see what content was moved and is now marked as ghosted content in the main archive (e7d87e1c-b39f-493f-8e56-9d271d6d23ea).

PS C:\> Get-MailboxFolderStatistics e7d87e1c-b39f-493f-8e56-9d271d6d23ea|?{$_.LastMovedTimeStamp -and $_.Foldersize -gt 0}|select FolderSize,LastMovedTimeStamp,Contentmailboxguid
FolderSize LastMovedTimeStamp ContentMailboxGuid
---------- ------------------ ------------------
15.74 GB (16,900,662,851 bytes) 3/29/2018 2:24:04 PM 62928e39-bc01-4763-84f5-84ac314ea5e1
898.9 KB (920,440 bytes) 3/29/2018 2:24:04 PM 62928e39-bc01-4763-84f5-84ac314ea5e1
28.4 GB (30,495,702,247 bytes) 3/29/2018 2:24:05 PM 62928e39-bc01-4763-84f5-84ac314ea5e1
7.485 GB (8,037,032,197 bytes) 3/29/2018 2:24:05 PM 62928e39-bc01-4763-84f5-84ac314ea5e1

We can see the 51.63GB that are marked as ghosted content since we have a LastMovedTimeStamp of 3/29/2018 and a ContentMailboxGuid associated with the folders – which is the newly provisioned auxiliary location 62928e39-bc01-4763-84f5-84ac314ea5e1. This content will be flushed within approximately 30 days.

How much content is being moved to auxiliary archives during the transition?

These numbers can change as the service evolves, but right now we will move 50% of the occupied size in the main archive. If you have 100GB in the Main Archive at the point where Managed Folder Assistant processes the main archive, we will expand and provision a new auxiliary archive and move about 50GB into that auxiliary archive. We only move 50% to cater for additional folder growth in those folders that have been moved.

How is the transition size calculated?

Well, we simply look at how much occupied space the main archive is utilizing. Occupied space is essentially any folder in the main archive that is movable or type DeletedItems or RecoverableItems (folders marked green below). You may notice that the DeletedItems and RecoverableItems folder types are not movable. For these folders we create movable folders under the root of the folders and move the content to those newly created folders to get picked up by managed folder assistant. All of this happens in the background, so you don’t have to worry about it. Folders that do not fall into those categories are not taken into consideration during expansion. So please do not move 10’s of GB into the /Top of Information Store or the /Archive folders – we don’t cater for those… yet.

PS C:\> Get-MailboxFolderStatistics b2b6421a-8bb0-4a91-9504-73cf42af570f|select folderpath,movable,*type*
FolderPath Movable FolderType
---------- ------- ----------
/Top of Information Store False Root
/Archive False Archive
/Calendar True User Created
/Calendar/United States holidays True User Created
/Clutter False Clutter
/Deleted Items False DeletedItems
/Drafts True User Created
/ExternalContacts False ExternalContacts
/Files False Files
/Inbox True User Created
/PersonMetadata True User Created
/Sent Items True User Created
/Recoverable Items False RecoverableItemsRoot
/Calendar Logging False CalendarLogging
/Deletions False RecoverableItemsDeletions
/DiscoveryHolds False RecoverableItemsDiscoveryHolds
/Purges False RecoverableItemsPurges
/Versions False RecoverableItemsVersions

Can I ingest more than 100GB into the archive via a third party tool?

This is quite a tricky one for us. We don’t officially support bulk ingestion of more than 100GB into the archive at any one given time. There is currently work on going to provide solutions for these scenarios in the future, but we don’t have any timelines to share right now. Since there are multiple ingestion scenarios we suggest that you contact Microsoft so that we can understand your situation and advise you on the best way forward for your ingestion project. Special thanks to the following folks for reviewing and providing valuable input:
  • Gagandeep Kohli – Snr Software Engineer
  • David Santamaria – Snr Escalations Engineer
  • Angela Taylor – Snr Program Manager
That’s all we have for now, I hope this helps you understand this feature a little better. The component team is working hard to continually improve the feature as we grow in the service and find unique scenarios that our customers use. Michael Hall Snr. Service Engineer
53 Comments
Not applicable
Excellent article, lots of insights on something which is really new and unexplored.

Few more questions:

1)For these folders we create movable folders under the root of the folders and move the content to those newly created folders to get picked up by managed folder assistant.

-Does it move it to the aux archives Deleted Items or to new named folders as is.

2) When is the 2nd Aux archive created

3) Does data from 1st Aux Archive move to 2nd Aux Archive or Main Archive to 2nd Archive or Primary to 2nd Archive.

4) Once MainArchive's ghosted content is flushed out, will it again start taking in content from Primary.

Not applicable
Hey Satyajit321,

1. I'm not too sure I understand this question, but if you create a folder anywhere under any of the movable folders we will take that folder into consideration and it will be moved to a new Aux mailbox location during the next expansion if the main archive is over threshold.

2. The second Aux will be created once the main archive reaches the 90GB threshold again.

3. We can move data from Aux mailbox location if it reaches to the 90GB threshold, that does not occur as often. Data will move from Main archive to 2nd Aux location on the second expansion. Data can also move from Primary to 2nd Aux location if user adds data to the folders associated with that aux location. This all happens behind the scenes and you dont have to worry about this to be honest :)

4. The main archive will constantly take in new content if you have configured your retention policies correctly. We dont block the main archive location if there is ghosted content in the main archive.

Not applicable
Thanks, the moves are more like a network mesh, than a waterfall one. Glad all these are automatically managed.
Not applicable
There is also a "retention hold" which could cause confusion.

Use this command to check it: "Get-Mailbox -ResultSize unlimited | Where-Object {$_.RetentionHoldEnabled -eq $true} | Format-Table Name,RetentionPolicy,RetentionHoldEnabled -Auto" it returns all mailboxes with "RetentionHoldEnabled" enabled (note: mailboxes are automatically set to retention hold after you manually import a .pst file).

To check the mailboxes with "litigation hold" use this command: "Get-Mailbox -ResultSize unlimited | Where-Object {$_.LitigationHoldEnabled -eq $true} | Format-Table Name,LitigationHoldEnabled -Auto"

Not applicable
I have enabled the auto expansion on one of my users which now have 110GB of archive storage. However, it shows that there are 150GB of emails that were already archived but it also shows that there's only 110GB archive storage. The emails keep on being archived but the storage location is not expanding pass 110GB. Does this mean that archived emails beyond the 110GB are going to the auxiliary archive storage? My problem here is that archive warning quota (when reached 90% of the archive storage) keeps on notifying me that the archive is already full.
Not applicable
Is there a time limit for In-Place archive emails, or as long as licensing is maintained, emails should survive? I thought I'd seen a 7 yr default retention on In-Place Archive mailboxes, but haven't been able to confirm if there is any default retention time.
Copper Contributor

The major issue we have with Auto-Expanding Archive, and that is not mentioned anywhere in this article, is that it is not searchable.   In order to search in folders that are located in the Aux Archives, the user must search each folder individually.   That is not how search is supposed to work.   Search is supposed to search across all folders...   While I am told from multiple levels of support that "this is by design", I cannot reasonably accept that statement because I don't understand how Microsoft could stand for something being "broken by design".   "Broken by design," is not a good motto to associate with.

 

Any insight how we can get this searching feature working 100% for the end user would be helpful.   I have also found in the UserVoice an issue and voted it up.

Copper Contributor

Hi,

 

I have a situation here, i have auto-expanded the archive of the users and it was set to 110GB but now users have exceeded this limit and reached upto 118 GB. Emails are continously being archived but I could not be able to find out emails before 1 year. 

 

I re-enabled auto expanding for this users but archive is still 110GB.

 

Any assistance please 

Copper Contributor

Instead of writing fancy article .... why don't you put answer straight ....rather moving here and there and making simple things complex and difficult to understand....

Copper Contributor
This article was incredibly helpful, thank you very much for posting it. I consult with many customers on this exact issue and these are all questions I get asked daily and have a hard time answering. So thanks for the "Fancy Article" ;)
Iron Contributor
Don't see this mentioned here, so thought it was be good for others. Users will no longer be able to search All Mailbox items or similar searching when messages have moved to this additional auxiliary mailbox. They MUST select the folder for where the message would have been stored to search. What is not mentioned is "Sent items" folder does not seem to working. This particular user which has 130GB in their Archive Mailbox(es), their sent items only go back to 2018 and cannot be used to search either. They however can find a corresponding message in another folder before that date. "You can search for items that were moved to an additional storage area only by searching the folder itself. This means that you have to select the archive folder in the folder list to select the Current Folder option as the search scope. Similarly, if a folder in an auto-expanded storage area contains subfolders, you have to search each subfolder separately."
Copper Contributor

How would I move a 250 GB on-premises archive to Exchange Online?  Would the process be like this:

  • Enable auto-expanding archives for the organization.
  • Start the move request.
  • When it fails due to the archive being maximum size, wait.
  • Monitor to see when the next archive is created.
  • Resume the move request.
  • Go back to the third step.

Am I close?

Copper Contributor

@Ed_CrowleyI have the same situation on my managed company. We have some mailboxes that exceeds 300 GB size. I've done migration already like this (process is quite slow):

1) Enable auto-expanding

2) Moved data until archive was full. Actually there was ~120 GB used size and warning that Archive was full :)

3) Waited about 2-3 weeks and then I saw on Outlook, that Archive has 80 GB Free, so that means, that Expanding worked and I've got extra space.

4) Repeated 2-3 steps until migration was done.

 

I don't know if it could be done faster (I haven't took a risk to move all at once, because there was only 4 mailboxes to do such complicated migration).

Copper Contributor

Does anyone know if there is a way to determine what gets archived first? Or how or this decision is made? Or is the archiving done by age and MS determines this and we have no control over it?

Copper Contributor

MariusSvarcas, the problem is that a remote mailbox move won't even start when the mailbox is oversize.  What we're doing is to move the excess data into a separate new mailbox to bring the mailbox and its archive to within the limit, then start the mailbox move.  When it completes, we'll migrate the excess mailbox's data using MigrationWiz.  I've done the latter part before, and it's time consuming due to the wait for the archive to split, but it did work.

 

Copper Contributor

@MariusSvarcas : Did you use any third party tool for migrating the huge mailboxes or was it a MS migration?

Copper Contributor

@ApurvaDWe had only a few huge mailboxes, so I've made "manual" migration for it. All other was migrated with MS migration.

Copper Contributor

How does this apply to Shared mailboxes?  We are looking to remove our 'Never Delete' retention policy.  Someone mentioned to me that all shared mailboxes that want to use the auto archive will need a ofifce 365 license?  Is this true?

Copper Contributor

As far as I know archives are supported only for licensed mailboxes so the auto-expanding archive certainly wouldn't apply.

Copper Contributor

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/exchange-team-blog/office-365-auto-expanding-archives-faq/ba-...

!!

 

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----

Von: Rolf Schröder

Gesendet: Dienstag, 11. Januar 2022 16:21

An: Hauke von Essen <Email address removed>

Betreff: AW: Umleitung DeineCDU.de usw ..

 

Hallo Hauke,

nach mehreren Störungen, auf verschiedenen Geräten, funktioniert anscheinend alles wieder. Es tauchen alte Nachrichten auf. Die Links innerhalb der Darstellung landen im Nichts. Wenn man am Ende auf Seite z. B. auf Seite 2 Klickt, landet man auf der aktuellen CDU Seite. Wie ist dies möglich?

Wer hat Zugriff auf die Archiv Seite zur Bearbeitung? Wer hat sie am 24 Apr. 2016 14:28:35 UTC eingestellt?

Weitergeleitet von         http://deinecdu.de/

keine andere Mementos dieser url

Alle Mementos von Domain deinecdu.de

von Domain www.cdu-ellerau.de können bearbeitet werden? Könnten z. B. die fehlleitenden Links systematisch ausgetauscht werden?

  1. B. http://www.cdu-ellerau.de/lebens-und-liebenswertes-ellerau/ in http://gemeindevertreter.nordc.de/lebens-und-liebenswertes-ellerau/ ?

https://archive.is/SHQhC

Alle guten Wünsche für Dich und Deine Familie für 2022. Geht es Euch allen gut?

Herzliche Grüße und Dankeschön

Rolf

 

AbbildBildschirmfoto

teilendownload .zipeinen Fehler oder Missbrauch meldenspendeneingestellt?

 

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----

Von: Hauke von Essen <Email address removed>

Gesendet: Dienstag, 11. Januar 2022 12:04

An: 'Rolf Schröder' <Email address removed>

Betreff: AW: Umleitung DeineCDU.de

 

Hallo Rolf,

 

ich lande auf der Archiv-Seite. Somit ist alles richtig.

 

VG

Hauke

Danke

Copper Contributor

Dear all, @The_Exchange_Team :

 

Currently, I am migrating my On-Prem users to O365 and On-Prem users have PST files but few of the users have huge PST files, precisely  more than 140 GB. 

Done following steps already:

 

1) Enable auto-expanding

2) I Moved data until the archive was full. Actually there was ~150 GB used size and warning that Archive was full :)

3) It's almost 3 weeks but no luck so far. As I can see from EAC console message stating that "Auto-expanding archive is using 130.01 GB" but no progress so far, I am not sure when it can be done up to 1.5 TB archive storage. 

 

Can someone help, please ???

@Ed Crowley @MariusSvarcas : I believe you both had similar issues in past, would you please let me know how it went through ?

 

Appreciated all in advance, 

Thanks,

 

Copper Contributor

Hello, @Manan9 ,

as far as I remember it can take up to 30 days for auto-expanding archive to expand.

I've also checked on microsoft and it confirms 30 day term:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/compliance/enable-autoexpanding-archiving?view=o365-w...

 

I had only one ~300 GB mailbox and I remember that it took me 2-3 months to migrate.

 

Good luck

Copper Contributor

@MariusSvarcas , 

 

Thank you so much for your response.

 

Yes I know Microsoft article stated that it can take upto 30 days but still around 3 weeks from EAC i can see "Auto-expanding archive is using 130.01 GB" but no progress generally. 

 

@MariusSvarcas : When it was expanded archives Storage for you, the size was 1.5 TB ? Or less ?

 

 

Thank you Again @MariusSvarcas .

 

Best,

Copper Contributor

@Manan9as I,ve mentioned, I had only one ~300 GB mailbox, others was smaller (not more 100 GB). Sorry, I don't remember exactly how long it took to expand because I've done that ~2 years ago. But I remember that I've been waiting about a month and then tried again.

Copper Contributor

@MariusSvarcas but storage were expanded to 1.5 TB right.

 

@MariusSvarcas , thanks a lot for your time.

Copper Contributor

@Manan9I think yes, it's unlimited, so it should expand as much, as archive grows. If I talk about single mailbox, then biggest mailbox is about 400 GB in our company. If I talk about whole company, then sum of all mailboxes uses more then 2 TB of space (before migration we had ~1.7 TB on-premises usage).

Copper Contributor

I have a cloud-only user who had auto-expanding archives enabled in the past, and he wants to opt-out and return to a traditional archive, to have the ability to delete items.  He's okay with data loss.  How can I do that in Exchange PowerShell?

Copper Contributor

@dontneedausernamebut online archive allows deleting items as well as traditional archive, so where's a problem?

And if it's OK to lose data, then you can simply switch off archiving in exchange admin center. But I really don't understand such decision.

Copper Contributor

@dontneedausername You can't turn off auto-expanding archives once enabled.  Turning on the auto-expanding archive does not affect the ability to delete data from your mailbox.

Copper Contributor

@MariusSvarcas they were originally unlimited.  Now they cap at 1.5TB.

Copper Contributor

The archive does not expand to the full 1.5TB when enabled.  It provisions new storage as it's needed.

Copper Contributor

@dontneedausername ,

 

  • You cannot auto archives Turn Of for one user because this settings is org/Tenant wide.
  • When you want to delete the Items from Archives just disabled it for that user and leave it for 30 days without enabling. After 30 days, enabled again and you will get fresh archival storage.
  • You can delete Archives data via content Search but there are some limitations, at a time you can only delete 10 items so this method is not recommended and time consuming too.

 

There are different methods also, but that's totally depends on the scenario what kind of issues that you're facing or hurdles. If you can eloborate more than definately one of us can provide the best approach.. 

 

Thanks :thumbs_up:

Copper Contributor

Hello,
Does anyone knows what happens when you do "Remote Move migration" from Exchange server and Archive size is larger than 100GB ? Does auto-expanding takes place and starts to add additonal storage to finish migration or you get an error that archives exceeded limits ?

Copper Contributor

@SimonasPikelis ,

 

You will get an error and your migration will impact, once it reached the 100 GB quota. Auto Archiving process will start as soon as you reached the quota limit 90%, and it can takes upto 30 days depending on the size of data.

 

If you've a premier support with Microsoft than create a case with them and ask to increase the Archive Storage limit for you, if you're targeting any deadlines. 

 

Thanks :thumbs_up:

 

 

Copper Contributor

@Manan9 Thank for the answer, but maybe you know , if i reach 100GB archive quota-  Exchange Migration stops with error for me that archive storage is full , will auto-expand feature triggers and adds more storage so i can "Resume" migration till i get storage error again or it just stops without ability to Resume migration ? I have required licence.  I know auto-expand limitations 1GB/day. If this is not possible i guess it leaves me with 2 options

1. Reduce whole mailbox size including local archive to <170-190GB   (100GB for Primary + 100GB Archive).
2. Export PST ~40GB to make whole mailbox below 170-190GB and after migration import PST using Compliance center. This way importing should trigger auto expand feature.

Copper Contributor

@SimonasPikelis @Yes , when you check in EOC "Auto expanding...." I dont remember exactly the message but something above.. also you can check from Powershell below command.

Get-Mailbox testing1|select -ExpandProperty MailboxLocations
1;b2b6421a-8bb0-4a91-9504-73cf42af570f;MainArchive;namprd00.prod.outlook.com;e4811b9b-4a10-4575-bb21-db3d32a9f4c2
1;df788e2e-cdaf-44fa-bc52-b7ef9f9bb40c;Primary;namprd00.prod.outlook.com;3128bfb0-76a7-4492-9de2-4924c8b8e443
1; ab7b6054-eab4-4ea4-bb71-58dc6c8bacc1;AuxArchive;namprd00.prod.outlook.com; 76d35997-4d27-402c-aa3e-ffcd3f898faf
PS C:\> Start-managedfolderassistant

 

 

 

 

 

Copper Contributor

@SimonasPikelis, while the PST export and import will work, it's really painful. 

 

My experience is that a remote move won't even start if the archive is oversize.  There's no way I know of to move an archive mailbox that's over 100 GB to Exchange Online using a remote mailbox move.  If you provision a separate mailbox in Exchange Online, then use third-party tool like MigrationWiz to migrate the content, the oversize archive migration will fail.  If you wait a short while for the limit to be extended by the 10 GB, you can restart the migration, but it'll fail again when it reaches 110 GB.  At that point you must wait for up to 30 days for the split to occur, at which point you can restart the migration.  Repeat until all the data is migrated.

 

The total mailbox size isn't relevant.  The primary mailbox must be below 100 GB and the archive mailbox must be below 100 GB.

 

Maybe things have changed since I last did this.  If so, I'd be interested in hearing about it.

Microsoft

Hello,  

 

I have a issue here, both main archive and AUX are already full.  

However, the end user don't want to create a new mailbox and she want to delete items before 2018. 

 

May I know how the admin team to purge the items in the online archive and aux? This end user also has litigation hold enabled. 

 

Thank you very much

Copper Contributor

Hello, @HelenYANG ,

 

I would try to make it through retention policies, hope it helps.

Copper Contributor

Hello,

 

a question towards this 1GB growth rate limit per day.  In a case I do the migration of archive mailbox using third party tool, the growth of the target archive mailbox will be most likely higher than 1GB. Can it cause that no additional space will be served if I reach the archive mailbox size quota? 

 

Many thanks

Copper Contributor

Hello, @TomasHugan,

 

archive mailbox has initial size of 50 GB (or 100 GB in some licenses). Also regular mailbox has 50 GB. When I've done our company migration a few years ago. I've done like this:
1) Migrated all mailboxes <50 GB

2) Migrated <100 GB mailboxes in parts <50 GB (waited some time between migrations, so old emails was transferred to archive)

3) I had only 1 mailbox which was larger than 200 GB. It was migrated also in parts. But it took a lot longer, because it takes 30 days for auto archive to provision new space. So this mailbox was my headache as it took maybe 3-4 months to complete migration :)

Copper Contributor

@TomasHugan I'm not aware of any 1 GB per day limit.

Copper Contributor

@Ed_Crowley  it is mentioned here https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/compliance/enable-autoexpanding-archiving?view=o365-w...

 

"Auto-expanding archiving is supported only for mailboxes used by individual users or for shared mailboxes with a growth rate that doesn't exceed 1 GB per day."

Copper Contributor

Yeah, that makes sense.  I wouldn't allow that either.  I misunderstood the post; migration tools can exceed that rate when populating the mailbox.

Copper Contributor

Can emails still be moved between folders and subfolder when they are moved to extended storage?

Copper Contributor

@GorBadalyan ,

 

Yes, once content is moved, you can move, copy the messages to your desired folders

Copper Contributor

I've recently enabled auto-expanding for a user's Online Archive, who then wasn't able to delete any email items from their Online Archive (they moved to Deleted Items folder, but were stuck there).

 

If I disable their Online Archive for 30 days, I understand that this will delete its contents & present a fresh Online Archive.

 

My question is after 30 days, will it disable the auto-expanding feature? Or will it retain this feature when I re-enable the Online Archive after the 30 days have passed.

 

I've not seen anybody else pose this question, or answer it, so thought I'd try my luck with this forum.

Copper Contributor

Hello Gents , 

Need help on below points : 

Q1 . How to create alert to notify users , if Primary mailbox reached to 80% ? 
Q2 . As per article Primary mailbox is 100 GB and archive is 100 GB which is auto expandable up to 1.5 TB ?

Ref link :  Learn about auto-expanding archiving - Microsoft Purview (compliance) | Microsoft Learn 

Ref link :  Exchange Online limits - Service Descriptions | Microsoft Learn

Copper Contributor

@amitvarma :

 

A1: The user will receive an automatic notification once they have reached 80%.

 

A2: Enabling Archive will immediately assign 100 GB of storage, and as it fills up to 90% or 95%, Microsoft will incrementally provision an additional quota of 10 GB based on usage. However, the total amount of additional quota provisioned is not fixed, and can vary between 10 GB to 30 GB. It's important to note that Microsoft will not provide an instant 1.5 TB quota after the initial 100 GB of Archive storage is used. I hope this explanation is helpful.

Copper Contributor

One thing that is not clear to me from reading the Microsoft docs - if AutoExpandingArchive is enabled, will it automatically archive when the user's mailbox gets close to capacity (so 90+ GB for an E3 licence), or does it need to be configured in Outlook and/or EAC?

 

Apologies if this is straightforward, but none of the articles discuss it. If there is a link that explains it, please let me know.

Version history
Last update:
‎Jul 01 2019 04:32 PM
Updated by: