Journal Envy?

I was going through some old email today and I came across an email discussion with a colleague on journaling in Exchange 2007. As a result of that discussion I was able to clear up some confusion on what type of journaling is included with Exchange 2007 according to the way you have it licensed.

As you may or may not know journaling in Exchange is the ability to record all communications that take place within Exchange. Archiving vendors use journaling as a means to capture all communication from an Exchange server and store it in an Archive. If Envelope Journaling is enabled it also allows archive vendors to capture the transport envelope which includes the P1 message headers which include information about BCC and distribution group recipients.

In Exchange 2003 Journaling is enabled for each mail store. You could enable message-only journaling, BCC journaling, or the aforementioned Envelope journaling. Having journaling at the store level is slightly limiting in that you must apply it to all users for that store. What if you only wanted to journal a few select mailboxes that needed special attention? This brings me to Exchange 2007.

Exchange 2007 has two flavors of journaling, standard and premium. Standard journaling, otherwise known as per-mailbox database journaling, allows you to enable journaling for all users in a specific mailbox database. Premium journaling, otherwise known as per-recipient journaling, allows you to enable journaling for individual mailbox recipients. Since journaling is located on the hub transport I have much more flexibility in Exchange 2007 for journaling. So where is the confusion?

What my friend was confused about is that premium journaling is only available if you have an Exchange Enterprise CAL license. No worries though. While you might envy those super Exchange administrators out there fortunate enough to have an enterprise CAL, standard journaling works just as well. You are not losing functionality but only losing flexibility.

For more on journaling you can visit the Exchange Server TechCenter on Micrsoft’s website. I read through it and if I can understand it anyone can. :)

Here’s the link: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb124382(EXCHG.80).aspx



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Email Archiving, Exchange Journaling, Journal, email, Exchange 2007, Exchange 2003, Envelope Journaling