Guidelines for Archiving PST Files

Overview

In a typical organization, end-users' personal folders (*.PST files) reside on their local hard drives, network shares or a combination of both. Since PST files can only be archived from either a local drive of the Exchange Server or a network share connected to the Exchange Server, the PST files need to be collected from various places and moved to the appropriate centralized location for archiving. After the PST files have been moved to a centralized location, they can be then archived to secondary storage by the Exchange Mailbox Archiver Agent.

There are two different methods for moving PST files to a centralized location accessible by the Exchange Server, which are described below:

The preferred method is the PstDiscovery tool, available in the PSTDiscovery folder of the Resource Pack (see Tools and Utilities for more information on the Resource Pack), which automates moving PST files to a centralized location for archiving. The destination share is specified as a parameter which is passed to the tool on the command line. It is recommended that the centralized location to which the PST files will be moved is a share that is not on the Exchange Server.
For step-by-step instructions, see Configure and Run the PSTDiscovery Tool and PSTDiscovery Wizard.
A manual method can be employed to move the PST files to a centralized location for archiving. An example scenario is provided below which outlines the manual process.
- The Exchange Administrator can email users to request that they locate and move their PST files to a special folder, corresponding to their username, that has been set up on a designated network share or on a local drive of the Exchange Server. At this time, the users can be notified that when they move their PST files to the requested folder, that they turn off any password protection for these files.
- The end-users can determine where their PST files are located by either searching their local hard drives for files that match the following pattern, *.PST, or by right-clicking on the Outlook icon from their desktops and selecting Properties.
- Once all PST files have been moved to a centralized location, the Recovery Administrator can then configure the agent to archive the PST files from that location to secondary storage.

After PST files have been moved off primary storage, the corresponding storage space will be freed up from users' hard drives and/or network shares, and backup performance should be enhanced. If users want to recover a message from a PST file that was archived, they can open the PST file through Outlook and locate the message in the Personal Folder of their Outlook tree, then double-click the message stub to begin a recovery operation. If users want to remove the now-obsolete Personal Folders node in their Outlook tree, the corresponding service can be removed from the Properties view of the Outlook icon on their desktop.

Moving or Copying PST Stubs

During a Migration Archiving Operation of PST Files, stubs are created for messages in the PST file which meet the archiving rules criteria. To make it more convenient to view and recall PST stubs without having to import the PST file back into the associated mailbox, you can configure the movePSTstub registry key to automatically move or copy PST stubs into the mailbox associated with the PST file. Optionally, the mailbox folder location where the PST stubs will be placed can be customized by creating the StubDestFolder registry key and specifying the folder. In order to maintain the folder structure during stub import use createpstspecificfolder key.

Requirements for Archiving PST files

Ensure the following before archiving PST files:

The PST files to be archived must reside on either a local drive of the Exchange Server or a network share connected to the Exchange Server.
There must be no passwords for the PST files.
For PST archiving or recovery with Exchange 2003, an off-host proxy computer with Outlook 2003 or Outlook 2007 and the Exchange Mailbox Archiver Agent should be used. Outlook 2007 is generally recommended in this configuration.
For PST archiving or recovery with Exchange 2007, an off-host proxy computer with Outlook 2007 and the Exchange Mailbox Archiver Agent should be used.

If the location for the PST files to be archived is a network share connected to the Exchange Server, then the MailboxAdmin user account associated with the agent (that was set up prior to agent installation) must have the necessary permissions to access those files on the share.
Regardless of whether the location for the PST files to be archived is a local drive on the Exchange Server or a network share connected to the Exchange Server, the folders where the PST files reside must follow the same hierarchical structure as Exchange MAPI directory names. Information on how to determine the MAPI directory names is provided in the table below.

Exchange Server

You can determine the MAPI directory name and container(s) by running the following command string from a prompt to export the user list to a file:

csvde -l "DN,legacyExchangeDN" -r "msExchHomeServerName=*/cn=your_exchange_servername" -f your_output_filename.csv

Then look for the legacyExchangeDN field to find out the directory name and container(s). For example:

MAPI DN: o=org/ou=orgunit/cn/Recipients/cn=user

(in this example, the PST file folder name would be: user)

MAPI DN: o=org/ou=orgunit/cn/Recipients/cn=us/cn=user)

(in this example, the PST file folder would consist of 2 levels, the first folder called us, the sub-folder called user, such as us\user)

If any of the directory names or container names contain one or more of following characters:

* ? < > / \ : | %

then they need to be converted into format of %XX (where XX is the hex code of the character).