MS Exchange Server

temporaryidentity

my employer is currently cracking down on inappropriate emails and has been, i think, retrieving emails from the server that have been sent in the past. These are then printed and used as evidence that the employee has been sending stuff that shouldn't be sent.

Everyone is worried since i think most people have sent something they shouldn't at some time or another - some more often/serious than others.

My question is, what exactly can be retrieved from the exchange server using this method? Is every singlew email completely archived, including attachements? or is it simply a log file with the header displayed?
I would have thought that to store every email for a large organisation would incur massive maintenance and back up costs and therefore unlikely or impractical. I reckon complete email archiving would require several gigabytes per day.

Does anyone know what can be retrieved from the server, and how far back emails are/can be stored?

thanks
TI

Dime_Bar

Unfortunatly it is feesable for a large company to keep all of the emails sent and recieved.

Not only do you have to worry about the time span that Exchange is set to keep copies for but also remember that most responsible companies will do at least a live backup of all of there systems and have a cyclic backup set which could potentially be kept for years. Using decent backup software you can basically backup everything ever sent or recieved on an account for ever. We do at my work.

Dont want to worry you or anything.

temporaryidentity

Thanks Dime bar.
One of my colleagues was told though that a particular email could not be retrieved. He has received a large email, too large for his inbox, so it was parked on the server for a few days. When he eventually realised what had happened he phoned the help desk explaining it was an important email and he needed it. He was told that it could not be retrieved and he'd need to have it resent.

That would indicate to me that while what you say is possible, it seems that my company don't do that.

Am i right in saying that the back up you mention wold require gigabytes of space every few days? I'm talking about hundreds of employees, possibly thousands (I'm not sure if they have numerous servers for departments) and potentially hundreds of thousands of emails per day.

Most employees are limited to a mail box of only 50mb - anything above that limit is refused delivery.

LardyCake

As Dime Bar says it is very likely your employer will have, at the very least, backup tapes for a long while back.

However I'm not so sure of the legality of what your employer is doing. If you are a union member have a word with your rep, if not, it might be a good time to think of joining.

Dime_Bar

temporaryidentity wrote: »

Thanks Dime bar.
One of my colleagues was told though that a particular email could not be retrieved. He has received a large email, too large for his inbox, so it was parked on the server for a few days. When he eventually realised what had happened he phoned the help desk explaining it was an important email and he needed it. He was told that it could not be retrieved and he'd need to have it resent.

That would indicate to me that while what you say is possible, it seems that my company don't do that.

Am i right in saying that the back up you mention wold require gigabytes of space every few days? I'm talking about hundreds of employees, possibly thousands (I'm not sure if they have numerous servers for departments) and potentially hundreds of thousands of emails per day.

Most employees are limited to a mail box of only 50mb - anything above that limit is refused delivery.

Unfortunatly what probably was the case was that the IT Department could not be bothered to deal with it. I work in IT and there is a very big culture of not doing things unless you really have to.

You are right it will take alot of space to backup but it is common practice.