How to Deploy Exchange Server 2003 Journaling as Part of a Compliance Solution

 

This procedure assumes that your organization pushes Exchange journalized data to a custom-built or third-party compliance solution framework as shown in the following figure. It is assumed that the Exchange data is provided to a data storage solution in a structured format, such as MIME.

A journalized message is pushed to a third-party compliance storage solution

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For large compliance solutions where hundreds of thousands of messages (or more) are journalized daily, it is highly recommended that you hire a third-party service to manage the massive volume of journaling data. A service that specializes in archiving journalized data for the purposes of regulatory compliance will be prepared to receive, parse, sort, and index the journal data by using an SMTP connection from your enterprise.

Before You Begin

Providing Exchange journaling data to a third-party service requires extra management and specific configurations. Specifically, you must configure the journaling mailboxes to be sent to the compliance storage solution and then deleted before the local journaling mailbox is full. Special configuration of the server-side forwarding rule and the SMTP connector that provides the transport path to the compliance storage solution is also required to maintain fidelity of the messages.

Note

This procedure assumes that your organization plans to "push" journalized data to a third-party compliance solution provider over an SMTP connection. Some service providers recommend a "pull" model where POP3, IMAP4, or even a proprietary solution built on CDOEX is used. Both the "push" and "pull" solutions are valid methods; the SMTP "push" method is explained here to illustrate an end-to-end solution.

The following procedure describes the steps that you must take to push journalized data to a compliance storage solution. Perform the following steps after you plan how you will support journaling in your organization.

Procedure

To deploy Exchange Server 2003 journaling

  1. Create a custom SMTP recipient. For detailed steps, see How to Create a Custom SMTP Recipient for Exchange Server 2003 Journaling.

  2. Create the journal recipient mailboxes. After you decide how many journal recipient mailboxes you have to create, you have to set up the journaling server or servers and create the journal mailboxes. For more information about planning for mailboxes, see Planning an Exchange Server 2003 Journaling Deployment. Except for how you organize your journaling mailboxes, there are no other special considerations when setting up the mailboxes on the journaling recipient mailbox servers.

  3. Set a server-side forwarding rule for the journal recipient mailboxes. For detailed steps, see How to Set a Server-Side Rule for Journal Recipient Mailboxes.

  4. Configure Exchange Mailbox Manager to clean out the journal recipient mailboxes. For detailed steps, see How to Configure Mailbox Manager to Clean the Journal Recipient Mailbox.

  5. Configure an SMTP connector to transmit messages to the compliance storage solution destination.

    The connection between your organization and the third-party compliance solution provider is an SMTP connection. Although there are no settings strictly recommended for configuring the SMTP connector, this section provides some considerations for setting up the SMTP connection.

    Specifically, it is recommended that you have a dedicated connector for the target custom recipient addresses because this allows better control of the mail flow from your organization to the third-party service. Additionally, if you plan a large journaling deployment, it is recommended that you have a dedicated connector server. If two target bridgehead servers are used for the SMTP connector, load-balancing with failover is also recommended for maximum reliability and performance. For more information about setting up and load-balancing an SMTP connector, see the Exchange Server 2003 Transport and Routing Guide.

  6. Enable journaling in your organization. For detailed steps, see How to Enable Exchange Journaling.

For More Information

For information about planning a Journal deployment, see Planning an Exchange Server 2003 Journaling Deployment.