RE: Mailbox Issues

Thanks very much for that,  the kind of backup was that of backing up 
individuals pst files on cdr or something. Exchange on SBS works just the same 
I believe as other exchange version's where it keeps mailboxes on server. The 
server does do a full backup every night so I am not worried about data loss.

Is auto-archiving something you setup in outlook and can it be setup so that it 
store's the pst files on a shared network resource being user specific ?

Im trying to keep machines as not user dependant as possible.

Thanking You,

Michael


  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Chris Nielsen 
  To: [ExchangeList] 
  Sent: Thursday, February 27, 2003 11:04 AM
  Subject: [exchangelist] RE: Mailbox Issues


  http://www.MSExchange.org/

  I've been mulling over the same type of situation. I have several users that 
are around 300MB in mailbox size, which IMO is too large. They are either not 
archiving, or they are saving large type files in their mailboxes (lots of 
.doc's, graphics or pdf's or something).



  Here are what I have determined are some good guidelines to follow and I have 
recommended to my users:

    a.. Your Deleted Items and Sent Items folders should be considered a main 
archive source, and hence anything that is not worth keeping should be 
shift-deleted (permanently deleted). Spam, and other worthless email should not 
go into your Deleted Items folder. You should shift-delete it. (Rule-of-thumb 
is, of course, to *not* permanently delete if you're in doubt.) 
    b.. Attachments worth keeping should be saved to file and the email they 
came in on shift-deleted to save mailbox space (and therefore server 
performance). 
    c.. Everyone should have auto-archive settings set somewhere between 3 and 
6 months. Anything older than that gets moved to archive folders, which reside 
on the local machine and therefore don't have any impact on server performance. 


  The goal of all the above is to maintain an optimal mailbox size below 250MB. 
This equates to 64 users per 16GB of server space. I have yet to actually place 
a hard limit on mailbox size as there are a few people that have gone through 
their mailbox deleting everything they can (so they say) and they are still at 
or above 300MB. Being as one of these is my boss I can't go limiting the 
mailbox sizes willy-nilly J, if you get what I mean. Plus we have a rather low 
number of users on the system. We're nowhere near the 500 to 1000 users that is 
a typical load for a server. If we were higher in user count I would be looking 
at closer to 100MB per mailbox as a guideline myself. As it is, I'm not too 
worried about mailbox size as long as we stay close to 250MB top end.



  Your question about backups seems misguided. I'm unfamiliar with any 
specifics of running Exchange on SBS, but all Exchange data in the Information 
Stores should be backed up at the server level. This makes backing up at the 
user level superfluous. Once you get users using the archiving features of 
Outlook they will have a considerable amount of data in their archive folders, 
which will be in .pst (native Outlook) format, and these files should be backed 
up. But their online mailboxes should be taken care of at the server level. 
Does SBS not store mailboxes on the server?



  I've found the above policies to work fairly well for my application. I've 
been at my current job for just over two years and I myself maintain an online 
mailbox size just over 150MB and my archive.pst has just reached 135MB. I 
auto-archive anything older than 4 months.



  If anyone has suggestions or counter-points to anything I've said I'd be glad 
to hear them. I'm still pretty new at Exchange Administration.



  Chris Nielsen

  Systems Administrator

  New Dawn Technologies



  -----Original Message-----
  From: Michael Bonnice [mailto:whadmin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx] 
  Sent: Wednesday, February 26, 2003 5:06 PM
  To: [ExchangeList]
  Subject: [exchangelist] Mailbox Issues



  http://www.MSExchange.org/

  Hi All,



  Im having some issues with peoples mailbox sizes, currently I have not placed 
any restrictions on mailbox sizes. Some peoples are up to 300mb and growing. As 
I am running exchange on SBS this is going to cause an issue down the road. 



  Just wondering what a reasonable/average restriction is. Also the users will 
want to backup their mailboxes, is there an easy way to burn it onto CD or 
something, and what format should it be.



  Thanking all,



  Michael Bonnice

  ------------------------------------------------------
  List Archives: http://www.webelists.com/cgi/lyris.pl?enter=exchangelist
  Exchange Newsletters: http://www.msexchange.org/pages/newsletter.asp
  Exchange FAQ: http://www.msexchange.org/pages/larticle.asp?type=FAQ
  ------------------------------------------------------
  ISA Server Resource Site: http://www.isaserver.org
  Windows Security Resource Site: http://www.windowsecurity.com/
  Windows 2000/NT Fax Solutions: http://www.ntfaxfaq.com
  ------------------------------------------------------
  You are currently subscribed to this MSExchange.org Discussion List as: 
cnielsen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
  To unsubscribe send a blank email to $subst('Email.Unsub') 

  ------------------------------------------------------
  List Archives: http://www.webelists.com/cgi/lyris.pl?enter=exchangelist
  Exchange Newsletters: http://www.msexchange.org/pages/newsletter.asp
  Exchange FAQ: http://www.msexchange.org/pages/larticle.asp?type=FAQ
  ------------------------------------------------------
  ISA Server Resource Site: http://www.isaserver.org
  Windows Security Resource Site: http://www.windowsecurity.com/
  Windows 2000/NT Fax Solutions: http://www.ntfaxfaq.com
  ------------------------------------------------------
  You are currently subscribed to this MSExchange.org Discussion List as: 
whadmin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
  To unsubscribe send a blank email to $subst('Email.Unsub')

Other related posts: