Exchange Reporter Plus is predominantly a reporting tool. To give you insight on what happens to your Exchange environment over time, the solution stores historical data for all basic reports like Mailbox Size and Account Status in databases. Clean up of historical data occurs only for Email Traffic reports (every 35 days) and OWA reports (every 90 days).

Data from the Auditing and Monitoring reports are always stored since they're essential for security analysis and server health maintenance.

Enable archiving to avoid enormous database growth over time. Data that is older than the configured date will be archived into a CSV file and zipped. The data in the database will then be deleted. Archiving is supported for the Auditing and Monitoring reports of Exchange Reporter Plus.

To configure archiving for Auditing or Monitoring,

1. Navigate to Settings > Configuration > Exchange Server > Archive Settings.
2. Choose the categories for which archiving should be enabled.
3. In the space provided, enter the number of days for which data should remain in the database before being archived.
4. If you prefer to use a different folder to store archives instead of the default path, you can select an Archive Folder Path of your choice.
5. You can use the drop-down menu next to the Archive schedule daily runs at field to set the time for the archive schedule to run daily, or you can utilize the Run now link next to the Archive Last Run time field to execute the scheduler instantly.
6. Click Save to apply the changes.

The selected reports will be archived at the time selected by you everyday. Data older than the configured number of days will be archived.

To restore archived events:

1. Go to Archive Configuration and click Restore Archived Data.
2. Archive or Restore event data for any category and time.

Microsoft SQL does not come bundled with the installation of Exchange Reporter Plus. You can either use an existing Microsoft SQL server at your end as the default database server or download it from the Microsoft website.

To use Microsoft SQL database for your Exchange Reporter Plus instance, please follow the steps below:

1. In the SQL server, open the SQL Server Configuration Manager and navigate to SQL Server Services > SQL Server Browser.
2. Make sure that the SQL Server Browser is running. (The SQL Server Browser runs as a Windows service and provides information on SQL Server instances installed on the machine.)
3. Go to SQL Server Network Configuration > Protocols for <Instance_Name>.
4. Right-click the TCP/IP protocol and select Enable.
5. Restart the SQL Server Service for the change to take effect.
6. Shutdown Exchange Reporter Plus.
7. Go to <installation_directory>\bin
8. Enter ChangeDB.bat in the command prompt to open the Database Setup Wizard.
9. Choose Microsoft SQL server from the Server Type drop-down menu.
10. Enter the host name.
11. Select an instance from the list of available instances.
12. Enter your desired database name.
13. Check whether Migrate Data is marked as yes to migrate data from the existing database to Microsoft SQL.
14. Select the required authentication type.
15. Click Test to check if a connection can be established with the given credentials.
16. Click Save.

Note: The Exchange Reporter Plus versions must be the same. You can back up the product's database either using the PostgreSQL full backup method or by using the Backup from database method.

PostgreSQL full backup

1. Stop the product (Start > Programs > Exchange Reporter Plus > Stop Exchange Reporter Plus).
2. Take a full backup by copying and pasting the entire installation folder of Exchange Reporter Plus to another folder.

Backup from database

1. Go to <installation_directory>\Exchange Reporter Plus\bin.
2. Execute backupDB.bat and wait for it to complete. Do not terminate the process in between as it will cause data corruption.
3. A folder named Backup will be created in <installation dir.>, which will contain the database in a compressed file format (for example, 101217-1054.zip).

Note: To learn how to restore from backups, refer to question number nine.

1. Go to <installation_dir>\bin.
2. Execute stopDB.bat. Wait until the database stops.
3. Navigate to <installation_dir>\pgsql and rename or move the folder named Data.

If you used the PostgreSQL full backup method, please follow the steps mentioned below to restore the data:

1. Stop the product (Start > Programs > Exchange Reporter Plus > Stop Exchange Reporter Plus).
2. Paste the previously copied installation folder into the Exchange Reporter Plus installation directory.

If you used the backup from database method, please follow the steps mentioned below to restore the data:

1. Go to <installation_dir>\bin directory.
2. Execute initPgsql.bat.
3. Execute startDB.bat.
4. Execute restoreDB.bat
5. Execute RestoreEventTables.bat.

The user must have the sysadmin and db_owner role. The members of sysadmin role can perform any activity in the SQL Server and have complete control over all database functions. The members of db_owner role can perform any activity in the database.

To assign privileges,

1. In the SQL Server Management Studio, right-click the user to whom you wish to grant privileges, and select Properties.
2. Go to Server Roles, put a check mark next to sysadmin.
3. Click OK to save the changes.