Microsoft Exchange 2010 offers a feature to automatically select the database in which new or moved mailbox will be stored. This is a great feature and it does it’s job quite good too.
With the release of Exchange 2010 Service Pack 1 we are now able to specify the database we want to create online archive mailbox for the user in. This makes it possible to create an archive database on the cheaper and slower storage and keep the main user mailboxes on fast (and expensibe) storage.
What if we would like to keep the feature of automatically assigning new mailboxes to databases without the risk of the main mailbox going into archive database, we can exclude it from provisioning.
To exclude mailbox database from provisioning , launch EMS and type:
[PS] C:\>Set-MailboxDatabase -Identity "<DatabaseName>" -IsExcludedFromProvisioning $true
To re-enable the mailbox database for provisioning, launch EMS and type:
[PS] C:\>Set-MailboxDatabase -Identity "<DatabaseName>" -IsExcludedFromProvisioning $false