Export an archive before cancelling a Cloud Office account

Before you cancel a Cloud Office account, you should plan how to preserve your
archived email data. Archives typically export small numbers of archived items rather
than the entire archive. Therefore, you must plan before exporting an archive and set
aside an appropriate amount of time for completion.

Prerequisites

  • Applies to: Administrator

For more information on prerequisite terminology, see Cloud Office support terminology.

Export options avaliable

When cancelling services with Cloud Office, the following options are available
for preserving your archive after account cancellation:

Archive optionsTime RequiredCostTechnical Difficulty
Transfer to SonianNo time requiredNo transfer costNo technical work
Self export the archiveDays or weeksNo costDifficult to complete
Bulk archive export requestWeeksPriced per GB exportedModerate technical work after receiving the export

Migrate your archive using Sonian (recommended)

Archiving services are provided by Rackspace’s partner, Sonian Inc. The Sonian
cloud email archiving solution is compatible with all of leading email service
providers such as Office 365, Gmail, and Exchange.

This option requires no additional work. You maintain uninterrupted access to
all archive data and attachments.

To move archiving support to Sonian directly, simply click
Transfer to Sonain,
complete the short form on the page that follows, and Sonian will contact you
to ensure a seamless transition of your existing archive to your new mail service.

Export you own archive

Warning: If you reach your cancellation date before completing the archive
export, the export will be cancelled and you will be unable to retrieve the rest
of your archive data.

If you want to export your own archive considerations, the following before
deciding to export an archive.

  • Complete your archive export before setting a cancellation date for your
    Cloud Office account.
  • Archive exports can take an extended period of time to complete. Be prepared
    for a completion time of several weeks to a few months.
  • Decide whether to export in a PST or an EML format. Although PST
    is a more well-known format, exporting in EML is easier to search, faster
    to produce, and cheaper.
  • In most cases, more data means a longer and more expensive export if you
    request a bulk export from Support. If you want to export specific items, such
    as messages from a particular sender, or messages delivered within a specific
    time frame, exporting search results is a more efficient option. For
    information about how to export search results, see
    Export archive search results in Cloud Office.

You can use the following methods to export your data from your Rackspace
Archiving account:

Self exports

  • Export your data from the Archive Manager by creating searches and
    exporting the results of the searches. For information about how to
    export the results of a search, see Export archive search results
    in Cloud Office
    .

    Note: You can export searches with a maximum of 30,000 results and a total size of 20 GB.

  • To export an entire archive, divide your searches into monthly intervals for
    the duration of the archive's existence.

    Note: Searches do not build instantly. Be sure to consider this when determining your cancellation date.

Bulk exports

  • If you require a bulk export of your archived data, our support team can
    perform the export and provide you with links from which you can
    download your data directly.

  • Bulk exports require an extended amount of time to complete. They can take
    several weeks to a few months to finish.

  • You must contact Support directly to request a bulk archive export be scheduled.

The pricing for a bulk export is a one-time fee and varies by amount of data as
well as data format.

Export FormatPrice per Gigabyte(GB)
EML$6 or £4 per GB
PST$9 or £6 per GB

Note: Support cannot provide a quote for the price of requested bulk exports.
This is because the total size of the export cannot be determined until it is
completed and fully exported. The archive size displayed in your archive portal
is the size of your article in compressed form. After your archive is decompressed,
it is larger than the size displayed in the portal. The size displayed in the
portal also doesn’t include the size of attachments, which could increase the
total size after decompression.