Today I discovered that we have a journaled email box enabled, comprising of emails originating from 1999, and now is ~35GB. This is on an Exchange 2007 server, single mailbox database, about 50 mailboxes in total (25 real users) and the company has doubled in size recently. So I am trying to plan ahead and avoid a mailbox meltdown.
I plan to deploy Exchange 2013 later this year (although there is a very slight chance I can convince the powers that be to go with a Exchange cloud solution). I would likely create at least a secondary mailbox database for the sole purpose of this journaled mailbox. The could users that access the mailbox still demands infinite history with instant searchable and retrievable results.
I am a little unfamiliar with what the best solution for a journaled mailbox should be. In the past I would rely on email archiving products like Zantaz, but I have not seen how Exchange 2010 or 2013 has implemented their archive solution. I am not sure how the search history of opening a shared user account will present itself. Does Exchange just create a linked file and export the original message off the primary exchange db?
And just how big is too big? I know that you can grow a mailbox to 75GB, but how far would MS support a mailbox? Just 2GB?