How to organize storage in Exchange 2010?

Question

Mail server

Faced the Exchange 2010 Standart server at a new workplace. There are 5 connected bases, three of which are allocated for network archives of employees. The volumes of the bases have crossed all sorts of boundaries - 143, 192, 287, 435 and 650 (!) GB. After a recent disaster with a broken search index and a week-long recovery, it became obvious that it was time to redo all this.
Question: how to organize a storage system for old and current mail, how many databases should be on the server, what is the optimal number of mailboxes in the database and what is the optimal amount of mail databases? What does the Exchange 2010 reference organization diagram look like in general?
I'm leaning towards the option of raising an additional Exchange 2010 without a limit on the number of connected databases, moving to it and having databases no larger than 50 GB. The problem with this approach is that some employees have their archive size well over 50 GB.

Answer 1

We should probably start with the fact that MS Exchange 2010 has not been sold for many, many years - so it will not work to raise an additional server without putting a portion of bolt on M$.
Well, then go to the management and bring the situation to him. Because, as a rule, users begin to claim that they need the entire archive of ten years of correspondence, and here you are cutting them without anesthesia.
Then backup mail. How - it's up to you. Backing up the whole machine, backing up the databases of the express, reloading emails to another server... - it is important that there is a rollback point from where you can get a letter from seven years ago, where the counterparty sent a very important contract or urgently get a photo sent five years ago :)
After that, deleting all mail older than, for example, a year and starting db compaction. This can be a very lengthy process, and if the base doesn't crash during that time, you're in luck. :)