Archive Searching in Jira

[Dick]

Usage of Jira in our company is growing. In order to keep Jira "lean and mean" we want to archive projects to free up resources. 

Our userbase consists of distinct departments, which are keen on keeping the option to find information from issues inside these archived projects. 

The individual departments are okay with an archive being read-only. Still, they are keen on keeping the original access permissions of each project, and would benefit from being able to search through the entire content of the projects and issues. 

Reading some older discussions on this topic, I'm wondering why archiving has had so little attention. I reach out to you all: how have you been keeping your userbase satisfied with the current Jira archiving solution? If I'm missing something, please let me know!