deleted items retention

[rmcguire80]

We have the deleted items retention set on our database to 14 days and for our users to use the database defaults but on some of the users its still showing deleted items earlier than 14 days old....They have the Use Mailbox Database defaults marked within their storage quotas setting on their mailbox as well

Any help would be appreciated

 

[ShackDaddy]

If you also have the box checked on the database properties that says "Do not delete until a successful backup" or something like that, then deleted items will stay on the server until a successful Exchange-aware backup happens. That could mean years, if your backups are having issues or if your backup software doesn't tell Exchange that it is being backed up.

Dave Shackelford
ThirdTier.net

 

[rmcguire80]

that was not checked any other ideas?

thanks

 

[rmcguire80]

on some users mailboxes it is working fine, by only having 14 days in the deleted items but for others its going much further back than that

 

[ShackDaddy]

The items that are past the date are identified during the nightly maintenance cycle. If your database is large and/or you have multiple databases, sometimes it gets to a point where the maintenance cycle never actually finishes, so the deletion of emails is never actually completed/accomplished. If you go to each database and customize the maintenance windows and make sure that they don't overlap, or if you have one big database, if you customize it so that it can run maintenance all day Saturday and Sunday if necessary, that might allow it to complete.

There are events in the event log that show when maintenance starts and finishes, and if the window for maintenance ends before it completes, there will be an event in the log saying that it was interrupted.

Dave Shackelford
ThirdTier.net

 

[rmcguire80]

Where would I go about checking this as we do have multiple databases and one of them is almost a terabyte in size

 

[ShackDaddy]

Search for these events in the app log:

Those are all start/stop events for the cleanup cycle.

For Source: MSExchangeIS Mailbox Store
Category: General
1206
1207
9531
9535

For Source: ESE
Category: Online Defragmentation

700
701

If you just filter for Source/Category, you may actually have some other relevant event IDs in those categories that show failures. The event IDs I listed here are only for successes.

Dave Shackelford
ThirdTier.net

 

[rmcguire80]

I found 1206 and 1207 which ran this morning at 1:00 AM

1206[ Starting cleanup of items past retention date for Item Recovery on database "Mailbox Database"

1207

Cleanup of items past retention date for Item Recovery is complete for database Mailbox Database
Start: 0 items; 0 Kbytes
End: 0 items; 0 Kbytes

 

[rmcguire80]

I also noticed that there isn't in my application event log an event of 1221 for maintenance to be running

 

[rmcguire80]

under the deletion settings under organization config-mailbox-and properties under database management is the deletion settings "keep deleted items for(days)" how long the retention is or how far back users deleted items is stored....so it will only hold 14 days back from the current day....we are wanting it to only hold 14 days worth of deleted items....its is working on some users but not on others

thanks for your help

 

[ShackDaddy]

A few things to make sure we're on the same page:

- Each mailbox database has its own deleted item retention settings.
- Only the items that have been deleted from the deleted items (ie Empty the Trash) are part of this process. Not the items sitting in Deleted Items.

If it's working for some users, but not others, look for the commonality: are the users it isn't working for all on the same database? If so, is it that large one that might not be completing the nightly maintenance run?

Dave Shackelford
ThirdTier.net

 

[rmcguire80]

we have the keep deleted items for(days) set to 14 days for every user.....its working for some and not for others all in the same database

I thought this is supposed to keep only 14 days worth in our deleted items, so for instance today, the deleted items would go back to 1/8

 

[ShackDaddy]

No. If you want to have things removed from users' Deleted Items folder, that's a mailbox management policy, not a maintenance/retention issue.

http://blogs.catapultsystems.com/th...sing-retention-policies-in-exchange-2010.aspx

Dave Shackelford
ThirdTier.net

 

[rmcguire80]

Has this changed in Exchange Server versions as its odd that its working for some of our users but not all......so from the link listed this will allow us to for instance only go back x number of days in our deleted items in users' mailboxes?

 

[rmcguire80]

yes, we don not have retention policies set on any of our users....we have set them on two of them, but then do we have to run the start-managedfolderassistant, or when will this run nightly?

 

[markdmac]

Force a deletion with powershell

Get-mailbox -ResultSize Unlimited| search-mailbox –searchquery "Subject:'*'" –DeleteContent -SearchDumpsterOnly

I hope that helps.

Regards,

Mark

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[rmcguire80]

We only want to hold 2 weeks worth of items in each users deleted items though

 

[ShackDaddy]

Normally MailBox Management runs nightly.

Dave Shackelford
ThirdTier.net

 

[rmcguire80]

what do we need to look for to see if the mailbox management is running correctly as we have 2 mailboxes assigned to a 14 day retention policy to delete the deleted items, but its not working

 

[rmcguire80]

I just ran the following Get-MailboxServer | fl Name, ManagedFolderAssistantSchedule

and under the schedule it shows nothing