Mail Archive

The Archive sub-node allows you to specify mail archive and pruning options:

Figure. General section

Field

Description

Active

Select or fill in the path to the directory where mails should be archived.

Warning: Be careful when specifying a mail archive path. It has to be a fast drive, preferable directly attached to the server or high end storage such as iSCSI/SAN. Pointing to a slow path such as SMB on the network can affect server performance as backups get written to disk during SMTP processing. Another alternative, if backing up to a drive via UNC is really necessary, is to enable MDA, since then IceWarp Server will first receive the message and afterwords archive it. For more information about MDA, refer to Advanced.

Archive to directory

Select or fill in the path to the directory where mails should be archived.

Warning: Be careful when specifying a mail archive path. It has to be a fast drive, preferable directly attached to the server or high end storage such as iSCSI/SAN. Pointing to a slow path such as SMB on the network can affect server performance as backups get written to disk during SMTP processing. Another alternative, if backing up to a drive via UNC is really necessary, is to enable MDA, since then IceWarp Server will first receive the message and afterwords archive it. For more information about MDA, refer to Advanced.

Note: The archive directory path must be specified in UNC format. Do not use drive mapping letters.

Directory trailer path

Directory that precedes the user's inbox / sent items folder.

This field can either:

  • be left blank

  • or contain the date time variables to have folders (and mails) sorted chronologically.

Recommended folder format is "yyyy-mm".

Integrate archive with IMAP folder

If checked, the Archive folder will appear in the IMAP folder list and users will have access to their received / sent messages in read-only mode. This folder automatically appears in WebClient and has to be signed up to in other email clients.

Figure. Options section

Field

Description

Archive messages

Select from four options:

  • Received and sent messages to Inbox and Sent folder: Archives both incoming and outgoing messages into separate folders.

  • Received messages to Inbox folder: Archives incoming messages into the appropriate folder.

  • Received and sent messages to root folder: Archives all messages into the root folder.

  • Received messages to root folder: Archives incoming messages into the root folder.

  • Deleted messages: Archives deleted messages.

Note: Root folder here means the root of the user's mailbox so there will not be Inbox/Sent folders.

Forward archived messages to

Fill in an email address where you want to have all messages forwarded to. You can enter more addresses separated by semicolons.

This can be a way how to backup your (server/domain/user) email correspondence. It can be also any outside address.

Do not archive spam

Check this box and messages which are marked as spam will be excluded from the archive process.

Do not archive RSS

Check this box to have RSS feeds excluded from archive process.

Figure. Backup & Expiration section

Field

Description

Delete messages from archive older than (Days)

Enter a number here and emails older than this number of days from current day will be deleted.

Backup deleted messages to file

Check this option and enter a directory name to have deleted emails backed up to the specified file. The file name can contain "yyyymmdd", which will create a separate file for each day.

These backup files are in standard ZIP format and files are stored with relative path information, so to restore a particular file you should extract the contents to your top-level mail directory with the extract option to "use folder names".

Password protection

Optionally specify a password here to have the backup file password protected.

Delete Backup files older than (Days)

Enter a number here and backups older than this number of days will be deleted. Zero means that backup files are not deleted, they are kept forever.

Note: This function deletes all files with the same extension based on the system file time stamp.
It is highly recommended that, if you use this function, you specify a directory that only contains these backup files.