Quarantined Mailboxes

This post is on the mailbox quarantine feature of Exchange Server 2010 where exchange server detects a mailbox which is causing issues to the information store health and quarantines it to avoid the database to get dismounted and affect the Exchange system.

When the mailbox is quarantined it will no longer be available for usage until we manually recover it by deleting the registry key to release the mailbox from quarantine after fixing the issue on the mailbox which is now considered as the Poison mailbox.

More information is available in the below MS article and related TechNet article with clear information and steps to fix the issue.

Quarantined mailboxes detected on Microsoft Exchange Server 2010

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2603736

TechNet Article

http://technet.microsoft.com/library/bb331958.aspx#SH

Additional Bytes

While reading on this topic found another related article which talks on the new issue caused when we install Exchange 2010 Sp2 in a environment monitored by SCOM Server which causes some mailboxes to get quarantined. Read the below article to know more on this issue cause and resolution.

Mailboxes are quarantined after you install the Exchange Server 2010 SP2 version of the Exchange Server 2010 Management Pack

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2729444

Update: For more information about the Quarantined mailboxes with real time configuration and recovery review this recent TechNet blog post from Rhoderick Milne [MSFT]

Also this post is quite significant as it discusses the real time scenarios with respect to Exchange 2010 and 2013 clearly.

In comparison with Exchange 2010 with Exchange 2013 Managing Quarantined mailbox became easy with the new Enable-MailboxQuarantine and Disable-MailboxQuarantine cmdlets

Review here: How To Set Mailbox Quarantine In Exchange

Additionally, read the below Excellent post from MVP Tony Redmond on his blog over this topic

Mailbox quarantining in Exchange 2010 and Exchange 2013