i didnt realize how bad it was at work. people keep everything. we just switched from a pop server in milwaukee to exchange, we only have about 20 active users on exchange so far and already my DB is 12 gigs!the users decided to copy all the mail in thier PST files to exchange so they could have access to all thier old mail in OWA. these people will get a rude awakening when i put limits on mailbox size

but seriously, do you really need to keep a mail message from 1999 that mentions that rick in finance brought donuts

In my experience, it's a delicate balance, but I don't think it's too bad.

That's really only 600 MB per user on average...really no *too* bad, especially if the business is very email oriented.

I bet you could break that 600 MB down to:

150 MB attachments in inbox/outbox/deleted
150 Inbox
150 Sent
150 Deleted


Of course people should not keep every message, but often (again depending on the business) old emails are very important. Especially in the financial sector. When I worked in a claims department for our company, historic emails were very valuable. Yes, the emails from 2003 are necessary at times.

After 5 years in a outlook environment, having a 600MB or less mailbox is almost impossible, and that's after deleting unneeded attachments, personal email, "office-wide spam", etc.

It's tough to give your employees a wonderful tool, but then not let them full use it. As being one tasked with monitoring the email box sizes at my old place, a 800 MB quota worked with occasional nasty-grams (coincidentally adding to the problem) at 600MB.

The other thing to think about is, say that you go crazy hardcore with a quota, you'll see an increase in other network storage locations (if you use them) with people now saving their attachments and occasional full mailbox back-ups on they personal network path or even on a shared network path. And if you limit that, then they'll print everything costing even more money at the bottom line.

You can try to put out the fire, but it will ignite somewhere else. With that said, I'd personally prefer the data in outlook, rather than say having people saving shit on their profile, especially if it's a roaming profile. Then your profile sizes bloat, and logons/logoffs to the network pound the domain controller/file servers around start-up and shutdown time. I've seen profiles so large (like 12+ gigs for a single user) than the harddrive couldn't fit the profile from the network while they're logging in....

So my vote is try not to get in the way of the users until the blurry line in the sand is crossed. Just like the internet is designed to route around censorship and infrastructure damage, your users when hassled will re-reroute their data to other mediums on you.



sorry tl;dr

Well i think there's a lot of factors that can play in quota management.

First, the storage costs can influence a lot we it's time to implement quotas. If your storage is on some kind of high-perf SAN's well the cost per GB can be pretty impressive ie: HP 450gb fc 15k for eva = 1399$ USD. But if your using some kind of internal / ext JBOD sata hds, well the cost per GB is a lot reduced.

Problem with emails, is that ppl don't erase them and don't classify neither... So when you start talking about restricting space panic starts.

At my work, since we have lots of users and costly HW, we restrict the exchange mailboxes to 150mb, but all pc's come configured with a pst in outlook. 150 mb is not a lot, but we offer corporate file transfers, inter-offices file transfer systems so we don't have large attachments (size restricted too). When a mailbox quota must be raised, the employee manager must approve the request. So when the managers are aware of the cost per GB, sometimes they think twice and verify the needs.

When email is the primary work tool, well that affects the quotas indeed, but starting by showing to ppl how to archive their emails can be a good practice too.

Another good practice can be to have shared mailboxes for users in the same department and/or public folders.

You could start by configuring exchange to send an automatic mail when the size of a mailbox reaches 90%. That way ppl will call support witch can have them do a little cleanup, and then after if quota still needs to be raised, well at least it would be for a good reason.

IMO there's no reason for someone to have their 1999 emails on a server...

Posted by nostra-YOUPPI! but seriously, do you really need to keep a mail message from 1999 that mentions that rick in finance brought donuts

You're complaining about **12GB**?

It's a legal requirement at my company that eMails be kept for five years - that includes every CD/DVD-image I send to a colleague at another physical location or another who is "in the field"...

When you can easily get 1,000 GB for under 100$ and 67,000 GB for less than 10k, who cares about mailbox sizes?

i have 4 TB on the server, but i mean in an office of 12 people im shocked at what people are keeping, these are the people who yelled at me on our old server then PST files bloated up to a gig and complained it was my fault when they got corrupted!

Posted by nostra-YOUPPI! i have 4 TB on the server, but i mean in an office of 12 people im shocked at what people are keeping, these are the people who yelled at me on our old server then PST files bloated up to a gig and complained it was my fault when they got corrupted!

Huh? Why'd their PST files getting corrupted?

That is a feature of PST files.

Posted by trent Huh? Why'd their PST files getting corrupted?

once you go over 500 megs on a pst you are playin with fire

gmail=7375 MB space

I hate outlook express and mail servers.

well with exchange i have to saw OWA is a beautiful thing. especially if you dont want to put up a bes server for your crackberries

Posted by nostra-YOUPPI! i have 4 TB on the server, but i mean in an office of 12 people im shocked at what people are keeping, these are the people who yelled at me on our old server then PST files bloated up to a gig and complained it was my fault when they got corrupted!

i hear this from admins quite a bit. people have some pretty serious misconceptions about the limitations of residential/business email systems.

* Does not have infinite storage capacity!
-- email systems are a shared resource. learn to manage your messages!

* Is not designed for file transfer.
-- never ever transfer large files by email, its unreliable at best. if you have a large file, use FTP/HTTP/SCP.

* Has a potential latency of up to five days.
-- if you have something that is time sensitive, send it _well_ in advance or use another medium. not all mail systems process things in real time, and there are about a thousand reasons for delays and non-deliveries. and on that note...

* Is not the same as instant messaging!
-- its just not. dont fill up someones inbox with one word messages. thats just stupid. use msn/icq/jabber/google-chat for short messages.

also, Gmail + IMAPs is great AND it integrates with my blackberry storm with the gmail plugin.

Someone who used to work at my company is now an Exchange admin at King & Spalding. They are required to keep every email that is ever sent or received, and they can't be stored in PST files on the local machines.

Do not want.

Posted by MutantMandias Do not want.

agreed.

they force us to use outlook at work. so i wrote a rule to (store and) forward all messages arriving in that mailbox to a proper IMAP mailbox. they can archive all they want, and i get full IMAPs access to my email from anywhere on the net.

The last Lotus Notes server I looked at had 12+GB mailboxes for almost each user and was almost 3TB...

Perhaps the software, rather than the users, is the issue.

Posted by Beryl The last Lotus Notes server I looked at had 12+GB mailboxes for almost each user and was almost 3TB... Perhaps the software, rather than the users, is the issue.

Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I'm aware, Lotus Notes cannot store multiple copies of the same message by reference where Exchange can. So if you get a 10 MB attachment sent to 10 people, that's 100 MB used on notes but only a bit over 10 on exchange.

For everyone complaining about being forced to use Exchange/Outlook. Talk to a Notes user, you'll quickly learn how lucky you are. Nothing MS has done compares to the horror that is Notes. We have just converted to Exchange after years on Notes. I've never seen so many users thanking us for installing crappy MS software.

That's a shame. Domino had such potential at one point. It was a bitch to set up, but it had awesome capabilities. I guess it just never got any better.

where i used to work when they went to exchange they still had a single user sitting on ms mail. To this day there is an old 386 box with an external modem that starts dialing once every hour.

Posted by Washu For everyone complaining about being forced to use Exchange/Outlook. Talk to a Notes user, you'll quickly learn how lucky you are. Nothing MS has done compares to the horror that is Notes. We have just converted to Exchange after years on Notes. I've never seen so many users thanking us for installing crappy MS software.

As just an end user of Lotus Notes/Domino server, it officially sucks balls. It makes MS products look gloriously powerful yet simple at the the same time. I can't believe I'm saying that...it's just because Lotus sucks so bad.

as much as i hate to say this with exchange i really like OWA it makes getting mail so simple

I save every important email I receive (and sometimes send) if I'll need to refer back to it later to function at my job. Once my trash folder gets jam-packed I'll do a final sort of it to see if there's anything I need to save then I delete it. But my saved emails, GOTTA save those, either in the main email server or a more localized/special archival drive. Just yesterday I was working alone and had a question that was answered by a saved email from months ago.