Applies to: Exchange Server 2010 SP3, Exchange Server 2010 SP2

Topic Last Modified: 2013-02-20

Microsoft Exchange Online Archiving is a cloud-based, enterprise-class archiving solution for your Exchange Server 2010 on-premises organization. With Exchange Online Archiving, your organization can host your users’ primary mailboxes on your on-premises servers and store their historical e-mail data in Exchange Online archive mailboxes. This solution can help your organization with archiving, compliance, regulatory, and e-discovery challenges, while simplifying your on-premises infrastructure.

To learn more about the advantages of Exchange Online Archiving, download Microsoft Exchange Online Archiving: Service Description, available on the Microsoft Download Center as part of the Office 365 for Enterprise Service Descriptions.

Requirements for Configuring Exchange Online Archiving

The following are general requirements for configuring Exchange Online Archiving.

  • You must purchase an Exchange Online Archiving subscription for the Exchange Online service included with Microsoft Office 365. For more information, see Exchange Online Archiving subscription.

  • Your users’ primary mailboxes must be hosted on on-premises Exchange 2010 Mailbox servers.

  • You will configure a full hybrid deployment using the Hybrid Configuration wizard. For more information, see Configure Exchange Online Archiving with Exchange Server 2010 later in this topic.

  • Users must use Outlook 2010, Outlook 2007 SP2, or Outlook Web App to access the cloud-based archive mailbox.

    Note:
    To use Office 2010 or Office 2007 with Exchange Online Archiving, you must configure your users' computers to support Office 365. For more information, see Manually update and configure desktops for Office 365.

Configure Exchange Online Archiving with Exchange 2010

A hybrid deployment connects an Office 365 organization to your on-premises Exchange 2010 organization by configuring the hybrid features of one or more on-premises Exchange 2010 servers. These Exchange 2010 services must be updated to Service Pack 3 (SP3) for Exchange 2010 Server (SP3) or greater to enable hybrid functionality with the latest release of Office 365. After you configure a hybrid deployment using the Hybrid Configuration wizard, users in the on-premises organization can connect to Exchange Online archives that are located in the Office 365 organization and have other hybrid deployment features enabled. To learn more about hybrid deployments, see Understanding Hybrid Deployments with Exchange 2010 SP3.

To configure a hybrid deployment to support Exchange Online Archiving in your Exchange 2010 organization, a comprehensive deployment checklist with step-by-step procedures is available on the Microsoft Download Center. To select the appropriate checklist, you must first decide if your organization wants to use single sign-on. Single sign-on is optional for hybrid deployments, but strongly recommended. If you want to configure a full hybrid deployment and select different deployment options, you should see the Exchange Server Deployment Assistant for more information.

With single sign-on, which is based on Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS) 2.0, users can access both their personal (on-premises) archive and Exchange Online archive with a single user name and password. Single sign-on also benefits administrators. For example, you can control account policies through the on-premises Active Directory, which gives you the ability to manage password policies, workstation restrictions, lock-out controls, and more, without having to perform additional tasks in Office 365.

To deploy single sign-on, you must also deploy additional servers to support it. If you don't configure single sign-on, users with an Exchange Online archive will need to use separate user names and passwords for their on-premises and archive mailboxes.

For complete instructions about setting up single-sign on, including how to prepare for it, see Prepare for Single Sign-on.

If you want to configure a limited hybrid deployment to support Exchange Online Archiving in your Exchange 2010 organization, select the deployment checklist that is appropriate based on your decision regarding the use of single sign-on:

If you've already configured a full hybrid deployment in your Exchange 2010 organization and want to enable your deployment to support Exchange Online Archiving, you must purchase an Exchange Online Archiving subscription with Office 365. On-premises support for Exchange Online archiving is automatically configured and enabled by the Hybrid Configuration wizard. For more information about subscriptions, see Exchange Online Archiving subscription.

Managing Exchange Online Archiving

After Exchange Online Archiving is deployed in your organization, there are several management tasks you can perform. Managing Exchange Online archives is very similar to managing personal archives (also called on-premises archives).

For a list of management procedures, see Managing Archives. To learn more about personal archives, see Understanding Personal Archives.