Re: Public Folder Limits FAQ?

There are two separate stores, mailbox and public. Each can be 75 GB max.
You can set mailbox quotas to limit users to a certain mailbox size if you
wish, but there are no hard coded limits on the size of individual mailboxes
or public folders that I've ever heard of. There's no cumulative limit
unless you impose one on mailboxes, in which case the user would have to
stay under the mailbox size limit. But public folders would not count
against the mailbox quota - they're completely separate information stores.

Outlook 2003 running in Unicode mode can have a very large OST. I believe
around 20 GB is the maximum recommended size. 2 GB is the limit for the
older ANSI files used by previous Outlook versions. You don't have to cache
public folders - by default those appearing in the Public Folder Favorites
are cached, but you don't have to do that if you don't want to.

The issue I have with the large public folder is caused solely by the fact
that it is a single folder holding tens of thousands of items. If I reduced
the number of items in the folder, performance would be better. I have a
subfolder of my Inbox that contains around 20,000 items. Performance on
that folder is noticeably slower than it is with smaller folders. If I
divided those items into four subfolders instead of one, I wouldn't have any
performance issues, even though I'd still have all 20,000 items in
subfolders of my Inbox. When I say performance, I mean scrolling, sorting,
and searching. Within reason, this does not relate to total PF or mailbox
size, it's just the number of items in the single folder.

Just to clarify, the issue is number of items. I would expect a folder with
200 e-mails each with a 5 MB attachment to perform about the same as a
folder with 200 attachment-free e-mails. But a folder with the same 2 GB
size in messages without attachments would be just about unusable because of
the huge number of items involved.

It's not cache related - the folder with the 20,000 items is cached and
performs a little slowly. The PF is not cached, but I wouldn't suspect it
to perform any better if it was. IMO the performance benefits of caching in
an SBS sized network are minimal at best. Unlike in a big enterprise, I
suspect that most of our available network bandwidth in the SBS world is
sitting around idly anyway. And I doubt my local desktop's HD can get the
data to my screen much faster than 15K SCSI server drives on a server with
caching hardware raid and 4 GB RAM.

If you are currently using Outlook 2003 in standalone mode, I can't think of
any limitations you will experience by going to Exchange. If Exchange were
less functional than standalone Outlook, why would people buy it?


"Jonathan Davey" <me@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:%23OFeYjBSGHA.3192@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Thanks,

So when we say "75Gb" we mean TOTAL mail/folder EXCHANGE/SERVER storage in
any event. Rather than say /mailuser or /publicfolder.

Presumably 2Gb is about the "right" max limit for a "mailbox-username" and
persumably 2gb would be (and as intimated) the max for a public folder.

But im still in the dark, are we saying 2Gb for THE PUBLIC folder
including subfolders? Or can each sub-folder be say 2Gb in its own right?

Or do we consider the entire group..........

I mean mailbox-username PLUS(+) public folder must be less than 2Gb for
any given user account (connection).

My reasoning being that there is a "network limit" to each connection in
exchange (connection = user) where folder sizes are cumalitive and in
reality there is no differentiation between syncing a public folder items
and a mailbox-user items; if you see what I mean?


Sorry to be so dumb, but I need to get this right for everything to work.

Sorry if i confused with "personal" and "mailbox-user" I did actually mean
OST and not PST. Which kinda begs the question why Dave struggles with a
1.5Gb OST previewing... presumably its cached isnt it?

I do use a PST folder, which is 2.5Gb and it happily previews, sorts,
searches with no difficulty. Im on a 10yr project in construction where
many emails are ~10mb in size.

I want to move completely to Exchange and OST, hence the questions
regarding limits etc.

As I recall Exchange has a hard limit per mailbox of ~2Gb regardless of
the 75Gb uplift! The uplift presumably allows more mailbox-users rather
than larger mailboxes?? And again I believe the 2Gb limit applys to Public
Folders also...... I seem to have gone full circle!?!


"Dave Nickason [SBS MVP]" <gwdibble@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
message news:%23MwnoN4RGHA.1948@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
As Susan says, the storage limit is 75 GB. However, there are practical
limits based on performance. I have a 1.5 GB public folder that archives
a bunch of e-mails we never use for anything. Performance on that folder
is absolutely horrible - Outlook takes forever to display the contents of
the folder. Forget about sorting or searching. I also have a folder of
about 22 MB containing around 3000 contacts in a custom form. There is
no performance issue on that folder whatsoever.

So depending on what you want to do, you'll have to experiment and see
how you make out. You can always subdivide folder contents, or find a
way to get the items into SQL - maybe with SharePoint.

BTW, my SBS is running on brand new hardware with a dual core and 4 gb
ram - performance of huge public folders is not something you can solve
with hardware.


"Jonathan Davey" <me@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:u%237S%23X1RGHA.5108@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Are there limits to Public Folders? Like the 2gb limit on personal
folders?

Can anyone point me to a good QA resource for public folders.

Thanks

Jonathan







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