RE: Mailbox Issues

Thanks all for your help, im thinking i might setup outlook to autoarchive and 
have it saved to thier user folders. 

Thanks again

Michael Bonnice

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Chris Nielsen 
  To: [ExchangeList] 
  Sent: Friday, February 28, 2003 7:07 AM
  Subject: [exchangelist] RE: Mailbox Issues


  http://www.MSExchange.org/

  Auto-archiving is an Outlook feature, yes. I don't know of any way to set it 
up or control it in any way from the Exchange server. Completely client 
dependant.



  I just checked on my machine (Outlook 2002) and you can indeed save your 
archive.pst on a network location (UNC path). If it didn't allow network 
browsing to save the file, a mapped drive would do the trick, I would think. If 
you have some kind of logon script that redirects users to a server drive for 
their My Documents or something then it will be a no-brainer to setup. If you 
just want them to save it on a network location then you'll have to pay 
attention to file names or give everyone their own folder or something. You 
shouldn't have any problems doing it that way though, I wouldn't think.



  If you do, ask the list here about it, or post on the Outlook newsgroups. I'm 
sure someone can help out with specifics.



  ---



  -----Original Message-----
  From: Michael Bonnice [mailto:whadmin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx] 
  Sent: Wednesday, February 26, 2003 6:07 PM
  To: [ExchangeList]
  Subject: [exchangelist] RE: Mailbox Issues



  http://www.MSExchange.org/



  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:

    ·   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.) 

    ·   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). 

    ·   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

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