Is it it possible to "distribute" one logical email address between two shared mailboxes?

Question

We've got a hybrid system with multiple Exchange 2016, 2013, and 2019 on prem servers where a small portion of monitoring mailboxes and shared mailboxes for business operations still remain, and the rest of our several thousand user and shared mailboxes out in Exchange Online and functioning fine. The only caveat is we have a shared mailbox on premise that is hundreds of gigabytes (the primary mailbox alone), and then it also has an archive mailbox that is probably equally as large.

This shared mailbox has been the bane of my existence for years but because it belongs to a revenue generating group that deals with high wealth clients, its basically allowed to operate with impunity. We've stressed the importance of the team finding a CRM solution but they typically approach this subject like many people do when it comes to changing their timing belt on their car: "I'll get to it later". Then the belt breaks and guess what?

I need a solution to this and want to know if its possible to distribute incoming email at least between two shared mailboxes the way DFS load balances and handles file system data. Is there any way to use a single logical email address and distribute it between two mailboxes that can be hosted on separate servers? This would shrink the overall footprint of that single mailbox and break it into two mailboxes.

Answer 1

Hi @Rob Banks,

Is there any way to use a single logical email address and distribute it between two mailboxes that can be hosted on separate servers?

As far as I know, this is currently not feasible.

Just wondering why not just move the shared mailbox with its archive to cloud to release space on the on-prem Exchange servers?

Besides, you can also consider clearing up some old items from the mailbox via retention policies.

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Answer 2

You can configure mail flow rules to forward/redirect messages based on some criteria, say from specific senders, or even do it on a time basis, by enabling/disabling the rule periodically. Remove/reassign the email address to another shared mailbox, or a DG, so messages get copied to multiple mailboxes?