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Can a mailbox be too big?
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Can a mailbox be too big? - 2.Mar.2003 12:00:00 AM
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aovecka
Posts: 1
Joined: 1.Mar.2003
From: Delaware
Status: offline
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I have a mailbox on my Ex2000 Server that is over 1.5GB; yes, I know that's large; and I have limits set; but certain people in the company don't delete, and are important people...is there a problem with individual mailboxes being too large? I thought it could handle it and I haven't seen anything on the web about it. Now I'm getting problems with the store; I moved all mailboxes to another storage group; except for this one which fails on the move; but works ok from the client end. Also, offline defrag has checsum errors; im afraid to run the repair mode; and lose the data.
any suggestions? I'd appreciate it...thanks everyone.
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RE: Can a mailbox be too big? - 3.Mar.2003 4:56:00 PM
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estanislao
Posts: 1
Joined: 16.Sep.2002
From: Los Angeles
Status: offline
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Just for your reference, we have the same problem here at work and we have one person with a mailbox that is over 5 GB!
Definitely not healthy, but like you said, if the person is like a partner of the company, there's not much you can do.
The problem with a mailbox this big is that it's very difficult to control. You can't create a PST file out of it since PSTs have a 2 GB limit, and I'm not sure if the server can move mailboxes this large between two Exchange servers.
We're looking into an archiving tool right now that will definitely help. It's called EAS by Educom. So far the testing on this product has been great.
Good Luck.
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RE: Can a mailbox be too big? - 28.Mar.2003 3:27:00 AM
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wtdrisco
Posts: 20
Joined: 19.Aug.2002
From: Charlotte
Status: offline
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This is a problem that is widespread. I have several users that have over 1GB and ALL of it is STORAGE related. This is the catch, Exchange promotes STORAGE/SEARCH/RETREVAL of emails. All the tools are there to accomodate this, BUT it is denounced. My users tell me, that they have to SAVE everything so if someone called them about (Did you send? or Do you remember the email.?) then they juast search and retreive in Outlook. So as the Exchange server gets overloaded, where can I argue the point that Exchange is not a storage device.
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RE: Can a mailbox be too big? - 28.Mar.2003 7:31:00 PM
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atguilmette
Posts: 401
Joined: 4.Mar.2003
From: Southfield, MI
Status: offline
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Users don't have to delete email--they just have to archive it. What I typically do for *those* types of users is create Archive Folders based on the age of the messages (store these folders OUTSIDE of profile directories), usually in 3- or 6-month increments. They can be either server-based or local-based.
Typical setup for my users:
1. mkdir c:\outlook
2. Inside outlook, File | Archive.
3. Select "Outlook Today - Mailbox [Last, First]" as the top point from which to archive (that way, "Sent Items" and "Calendar" gets included)
4. Select the date as 3 or 6 months older than the oldest file in their inbox.
5. Ensure the "Include Items with 'Do Not Archive' check" box is checked
6. Choose the "destination" archive file as C:\Outlook\Archive<mmddyyyy>.pst
Lather, rinse, repeat until only the last 3 or 6 months of data is displayed. It's important to remember that simply DRAGGING AND DROPPING files from the "Inbox" to the arhive folders does NOT actually do it--it only makes copies and multiplies your problem.
Send out an email about the need to archive being crucial in maintaining mail system security, integrity, and availability. You can even spin it so that if someone DOES hack into the mail server, they won't be able to get items that have been archived, because they won't exist on the mail server anymore. That'll encourage most of the upper-level people to do it--top brass wants to look good and do their part to enforce security.
Once that is done, you can run an ESEUTIL /G again to see if the integrity problems went away with your massive mailstores.
[ March 28, 2003, 07:33 PM: Message edited by: atguilmette ]
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RE: Can a mailbox be too big? - 29.Mar.2003 2:22:00 AM
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wtdrisco
Posts: 20
Joined: 19.Aug.2002
From: Charlotte
Status: offline
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atguilmette,
This looks like a great method. I have been trying to figure out a "best" method approach here. As we are a Consulting Engineering Company that relies HEAVILY on email transmittals. Many documents are emailed back and forth with clients along with project questions. I had wondered about archiving project emails to a project folder with other documents and CAD design data ( one repository ). But many are using their mailboxes for this and giving delegation rights for team members to ADD their mailboxes to each other's mailboxes in Outlook.
I would like to figure out a best way to handle this, as I am not able to get Share Point Portal or a Document Management system to share all this. Though I have Sharepoint Team Services... It is hard to know what to do.. But my fear is that setting up an archive local to the C drive, does not get backed up and putting these on the server doesn't help on the disk space. What a mess. Any ideas?
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RE: Can a mailbox be too big? - 29.Mar.2003 8:39:00 AM
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atguilmette
Posts: 401
Joined: 4.Mar.2003
From: Southfield, MI
Status: offline
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I totally understand the disk space issue. My personal philosophy is that if you haven't looked at the mail in 6 months or a year, you're probably not going to look at it for another 6 months or a year.
Once a user archives his stuff, burn three copies of the archives--leave one with the user (which he can load when he thinks he needs the data), label and put the others in the datacenter (or mediasafe, etc.) for long-term storage. CDR media is cheap, and provides decent long-term storage (once again, I recommend making two copies for LT storage).
If you get a bunch of these together (like 30-40 GB worth of archive folders), you may consider finding some temporary free space on a server and backing just these up to tape as well. Can't ever be too careful. A DLT tape is like $60--a small price to pay for data security.
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RE: Can a mailbox be too big? - 30.Mar.2003 8:36:00 AM
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wtdrisco
Posts: 20
Joined: 19.Aug.2002
From: Charlotte
Status: offline
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Great points here. Does you company have a retention policy? If in the case that you do, how would that affect the CD stores that are backed up in a legal situation? Just curious.
I will address this offline of files. As this can get REALLY out of control unless one limits the mailbox size and enforces archives and backups.
Thanks
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RE: Can a mailbox be too big? - 31.Mar.2003 5:51:00 PM
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atguilmette
Posts: 401
Joined: 4.Mar.2003
From: Southfield, MI
Status: offline
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There is a large amount of debate, overlap, and confusion in this area.
For example, the SEC requires that financial documents or any supporting documents (such as workpapers, emails, or any papers that contain "opinions, analyses, or financial data related to audit or review"), be kept for seven years. In addition, there are extra requirements that the SEC places on publicly traded companies for secure records retention, such as off-site vaulting.
OSHA typically requires that medical/health records be kept for 30 years, disability claims and records for 25 years. If you do business with government agencies, they usually have regulations on how long you should retain data pertaining to them. You could get lost in all of the requirements. It's really quite frightening.
SANS has a great little article on data retention policies at http://www.sans.org/rr/backup/retention.php. In addition, GIAC offers some guidelines and rules about common retention policies--http://www.giac.org/practical/Alan_Lewitton_GSEC.doc.
Our company is only about 3 years old, so there isn't a lot to really store. Our retention policy (until it becomes unmanageable):
- Long term storage is comprised of a weekly full backup of every server, which equates to 52-weeks of backups a year in long-term storage. In many instances, several full backups can be contained on a single tape, reducing the media requirements. Our media requirement for long-term storage is about 150-200 tapes / year. We plan on a 15-year retention, which will net us about 3,000 tapes. Data CDs burned of mailboxes will be stored for the same amount of time.
- All user data is redirected via policies to servers so it can get backed up.
- Final backup of mail/files of terminated employees backed up to a server.
[ March 31, 2003, 05:53 PM: Message edited by: atguilmette ]
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RE: Can a mailbox be too big? - 1.Apr.2003 10:19:00 PM
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atguilmette
Posts: 401
Joined: 4.Mar.2003
From: Southfield, MI
Status: offline
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Probably more than the $9,000 a year we spend on long-term media. :-) The nice thing about our solution is that we don't need to devote more time to developing and maintaining another cog in the system. We have a disaster recovery plan and complementary recovery policy that is flexible (ie, buy more tapes) and fits into our normal business practices.
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RE: Can a mailbox be too big? - 11.Apr.2003 4:22:00 PM
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robsd
Posts: 20
Joined: 11.Apr.2003
From: Houston
Status: offline
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We had a simular problem here. In the oil business huge attachments of well logs. Found out these guys were just emailing them from office to office (next door). Our biggest was about 2 gig. We lost his mailbox but was able to recover with the deleted mailbox rentenion and a tape backup. As we're new to this we found another surprize, Exchange 2000 regular version has a 16gig store limit (assume Enterprize has none). And the fun part is you get an message and the store dismounts. You can't remount to delete things. We had to run ESEUTIL compress to get us just enough to remount and start deleting.
No upgrade to enterprize, just $4000 for and new lincense and a reinstall. I went through and created PST files with the large attachments with backups on CD, server, and a copy on the users pc.
Watch that 16gig limit. It bit us for a day.
Rob
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RE: Can a mailbox be too big? - 