Need to exclude the IMF Directory in SBS?

Earlier this week we were getting on one of our clients an error in our SBS report that the backups were failing. After looking into the matter we were getting the following errors several times:

Warning: Unable to open "C:\Program Files\Exchsrvr\Mailroot\vsi 1\UceArchive\{msg id}" - skipped.
Reason: Access is denied.

It appears that there was some problems with accessing some of the spam archive files from the IMF that we installed recently. If you want to review how to install IMF check out my previous post here. Well obviously throwing our client into a tizzy over a big RED X and FAILED on the report didn't help much.

So what do you do?
Well easiest thing is to exclude that directory from the SBS backup. Ah, but when you go and try to exclude the c:\program files\exchsrvr\mailroot\vsi 1\ucearchive directory you get an error that you cannot exclude a required directory. So we have to move the archive directory.

According to the IMF Technet guide it's just a simple registry change as follows:
Changing the Archive Location
The archive location is the directory where Intelligent Message Filter saves filtered messages when you choose to archive messages marked as UCE that have a rating above the specified gateway threshold configured on the Connection Filtering tab in Message Delivery Properties. By default, messages are archived in \Exchsrvr\mailroot\vsi n\UCEArchive where n is the SMTP virtual server instance number. By default the \Exchsrvr directory is created in the :\Program Files parent directory.
To change the location of the archive directory
1. In Registry Editor (regedit), in the details pane, right-click ContentFilter, click New, and then click String value.
2. Type ArchiveDir for the registry key value.
3. Right-click ArchiveDir, and then click Modify.
4. In Edit String, under Value Data, enter the full directory path where you want to archive messages filtered by Intelligent Message Filter. For example, type C:\Archive.

We changed the archive directory to C:\IMF\Archive.

Now the next step is to exclude that from the backup. Go to Server Management and the Backup section. Then click Configure Backup. Now run through the wizard until you get to the Backup Data Summary and click the Exclude Folders button. Now choose the C:\IMF\Archive directory and run through the rest of the backup wizard. You've now excluded it and that nasty spam from your backup.

Also, don't forget to change the Archive Dir in your IMF Archive Manager utility as well if you're using it.

There you go, your backups are now back to normal!