Here is what we do at the University of Guelph:
On Wed, Aug 31, 2011 at 04:45:13PM -0500, Matt Mencel wrote:
Not so quick poll. This conversation came up today here at WIU...we have been noticing it might be time to purchase more storage.
Does your university delete messages automatically after a certain period of time?
If so...
What is the time frame?
We delete messages from the Trash and Junk/Spam folders after 30 days.
Do you only delete certain types of messages, or just attachments?
All messages older than 30 days are deleted from the Trash and Spam
folders, regardless of attachments or size.
Do you keep compressed archives of old messages?
Messages more than 30 days old are moved to secondary storage by Zimbra
HSM. Secondary storage is compressed.
Do you allow the end user to decide if/when to archive their old messages before they are deleted.
We move inactive/expired accounts to "closed" status instead of
deleting them. Closed accounts are purged from the system a couple of
times a year. We started doing this after fielding too many requests to
restore deleted accounts from backup. Now if we need to recover an
inactive account, we just flip the status back to "active".
What is your reasoning...do you do this because of FERPA/HIPPA/SOME_OTHER_LEGAL_ISSUE?
Our policies have mostly been driven by available storage space. Some
people have legal requirements to hold on to email for longer periods. In
most of those cases we end up increasing quota. Our base quota is 3 GB
for staff and faculty.
Like most other respondents, when users ask for a quota increase we
send them a standard message with tips on managing their mailbox. If
more space is still required, we increase quota in 1 GB increments.
Regards,
Brent