Exchange Reporter Plus is predominantly a reporting tool. To give you insight on what happens to your 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 date configured 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:

• Go to the respective tab in Exchange Reporter Plus.
• Click the Archive Configuration link on the left pane.
• Choose the categories for which archiving should be enabled.
• In the space provided, enter the number of days for which data should remain in the database before being moved to a CSV file.
• Select an archive folder if you don't want to go with the default folder.
• Use the drop-down menu to change the event clean up schedule from the default 2:00am setting.
• Click Save.

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

To restore archived events:

• Go to Archive Configuration.
• Click Restore Archived Events.
• Load or unload event data for any category and time.

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

To use Microsoft SQL database for your Exchange Reporter Plus server repository:

• Open the SQL Server Configuration Manager
• Go to SQL Server Services → SQL Server Browser. 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.)
• Go to SQL Server Network Configuration → Protocols for <Instance_Name>.
• Right click the TCP/IP protocol and select Enable.
• Restart SQL Server Service for the change to take effect.

Refer to Question 6 for the steps to change the Exchange Reporter Plus database to MS SQL.

To use MS SQL installed in a remote machine: 

• Install the corresponding SQL native client and command line utilities in the Exchange Reporter Plus machine as per the SQL version and the machine's CPU type.
• Copy the following files from the MS SQL Server installation folder to the Exchange Reporter Plus\bin folder:
  1. bcp.exe- <MS SQL Installation Dir>\Tools\Binn\bcp.exe
  2. bcp.rll- <MS SQL Installation Dir>\Tools\Binn\Resources\1033\bcp.rll
• Open the TCP and UDP (1434, usually) ports if firewall is enabled in your SQL Server machine.

To change to MS SQL perform the following steps:

• Shut down Exchange Reporter Plus.
• Go to Exchange Reporter Plus Home >> \bin
• Enter ChangeDB.bat in the command prompt to open the Database Setup Wizard.
• Choose MS SQL server from the Server Type drop down menu.
• Enter the host name.
• Select an instance from the list of available instances.
• Enter your desired database name.
• Check if Migrate Data is marked as yes to migrate data from the existing database to MSSQL.
• Select the required authentication type.
• Click Test to check if a connection can be established with the given credentials.
• Click Save.

Note: The Exchange Reporter Plus versions must be same.

MySQL/PostgreSQL full backup

• Stop the product (Start → Programs → Exchange Reporter Plus → Stop Exchange Reporter Plus).
• Take full backup (copy & paste) in another MySQL folder under Exchange Reporter Plus.
• Check if MySQL or PostgreSQL folder sizes are equal.

Backup from database

• Go to <installation folder>\Exchange Reporter Plus\bin directory.
• Execute backupDB.bat and don't terminate until the process is finished.

Note: Restoration steps are given in question 9.

a. If MySQL is your back end:

• Go to \Exchange Reporter Plus\bin directory.
• Execute startDB.bat.
• Download and copy the dropDB.txt and createDB.txt and rename as dropDB.bat and createDB.bat respectively in \Exchange Reporter Plus\bin.
• Execute dropDB.bat.
• Execute stopDB.bat.
• Delete all ibdata1.file, ib_logfile* under \Exchange Reporter Plus\mysql\data directory.

b. If PostgreSQL is your back end:

• Go to \Exchange Reporter Plus\bin directory.
• Execute the stopDB.bat. Wait until the database gets stopped.
• Go to \Exchange Reporter Plus\pgsql directory. Rename or move the folder named Data.

a. If MySQL is your back end:

• Go to \Exchange Reporter Plus\conf\my.ini file and add 'innodb_file_per_table' under (mysqld).
• Go to \Exchange Reporter Plus\bin directory.
• Execute startDB.bat.
• Execute createDB.bat.

b. If PostgreSQL is your back end:

• Go to \Exchange Reporter Plus\bin directory.
• Execute the initPgsql.bat.
• Execute startDB.bat.

Note: The following steps are common for both MySQL & PostgreSQL (Don't terminate until the process is completed)

1. Execute restoreDB.bat (Ex: restoreDB.bat. by default restoreDB.bat ..\Backup\100629-2023.zip).
2. Execute RestoreEventTables.bat. (Ex.RestoreEventTables.bat. by default, RestoreEventTables.bat ..\Backup\EventData\100629-2025\).

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

To assign privileges:

• In the SQL Server Management Studio, right click the user to whom you wish to grant privileges, and select Properties.
• Go to Server Roles → Check sysadmin → Click OK.