Re: SBS user with extremely large mailbox
- From: "Dave Nickason [SBS MVP]" <gwdibble@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 20 Apr 2006 15:23:06 -0400
I'm in an end user environment rather than a consultant, so my issues are
slightly different. Not that much, though - just that I only have one
customer, my boss.
I used to try to impose all these limits, make him adhere to best practices,
complain about mailbox size, and all that. What I found was that I was
constantly explaining why something can't be done. This created friction,
and the impression that I was always the guy who could never do whatever it
was he wanted done.
Now, when someone wants to do something that may not be the best idea, I
never say no right off the bat. I say let me look into that. Then I find a
way to do it, and I say, well, to do that is going to be expensive, but it
can certainly be done. Often he will pull the trigger on an expense I never
would have.
This has changed things a lot. Instead of being the guy who can't do a lot
of things, I'm now the guy who can do just about anything given the right
budget. This has not only given me a great budget situation for IT, but I'm
better respected as someone who always tries to give people what they want.
It's expensive, but I provide a lot of value and service for that expense.
Instead of saying the guy can't have a 12 GB mailbox (keeping in mind it's
obviously not true because he does have one), I would tell him that I
certainly understand why he wants that. I would give him the performance
implications, and tell him he needs to budget for a higher level of hardware
and support (you get paid for this, right?). Anyone can tell this guy a 12
GB mailbox is unworkable. What makes you stand above the crowd is that with
some clever configuration in Outlook, you can make it work better - as well
as it can be made to work. To me, the most important thing is to make the
guy's IT experience great, so he'll be happy to pay the bill and recommend
you to his friends.
No is almost never the right answer. I've never done construction, but I
know I can build a road. You might have to buy me a construction company
and hire me some experienced workers, and it might not be worth the money to
do that, but yes if you really want me to build a road, I can do it.
My personal opinion is that if you approach this from the perspective that
anything can be done if you're given the right resources (read budget), you
will have a better relationship and be more valued by your client, and your
income will rise. All that's left at that point is for you to exceed
expectations. You've got a guy who's struggling with a 12 GB mailbox. If
you make him not struggle with that mailbox, his mind will be on that rather
than the bill, because he lives in that mailbox all day. The focus will be
on what you can do for him, rather than on how much he has to pay you.
Win-win.
"Matt" <Matt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:3F2DDC96-401A-4B4F-A246-2213C06CC654@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
HI
If ALL else fails b*llsh*t is the last resort to make the user
'sympathetic'
to the server.
Set the limits on his mailbox size to start giving warnings then cut him
off. He'll start screaming and shouting and you will 'have' to investigate
the server to see whats going on. You'll find exchange is 'Struggling' but
"You've managed to get it working for now" (you've increased the limit
again)
but you can't say how long it will be up without some remedial work and
reorganisation etc etc
The net result if this that if the user NEEDS his email on the road and
doesn't have it for a while he will make damn sure to listen to you after
you
get it working (you will be God at this stage). Also, it will be the
catalyst for him to play by the rules in the future.
If nothing else it will open the door for you to have THAT conversation.
Unless he knows his way around the server he will never know
Don't forget that after you have temporarlily got it working you will have
to take the server down at some point to do some work on exchange because
of
HIS mailbox size (block HIS RAS or VPN for a while when he is in THAT
important meeting)
I'm sure MS needs to include psychology in it's server exams for admins
Hope this helps
Matt
"Wopster" wrote:
Russ and Dave thank you very much for taking the time to answer my
questions.
I like the idea of scheduling two different syncs to take place. You have
both been very helpful.
Take Care,
LT
"Dave Nickason [SBS MVP]" wrote:
Some suggestions. I would guess that a major part of the issue is that
he
may be using an ANSI OST file instead of Unicode. This would account
for
the failure to sync, since he would be up against the 2 GB ANSI file
size
limit. R-click Mailbox in his Outlook Folder List -> Properties. On
the
General tab, Advanced, Advanced again. At the bottom it should say
"Outlook
is running in Unicode mode against the Microsoft Exchange Server."
Otherwise, you need to switch the OST to Unicode and re-sync from
scratch.
I would most definitely do this while connected to the wired LAN. You
should be able to get Outlook to create a Unicode OST by shutting it
down
completely (including ActiveSync etc.). Find all the PST and OST files
in
the user profile and rename them. Open Outlook, which should recreate
the
OST. Without waiting for the new OST to sync, check to see that it's
in
Unicode mode. If not, post back and I'll figure out a group policy
setting
you can create to tell Outlook to prefer Unicode. After the Unicode
OST is
created and synched, you can rename any PSTs that he uses back to their
original names. If there are size issues with PSTs, I would create new
ones
in Unicode and import the items from the old PSTs. If Outlook finds
any
ANSI files when it goes to create the new OST, it won't create it in
Unicode
and you'll be right back in the same place.
Another suggestion if you're still having issues after this: stop
using
cached mode. Manually configure the settings for folders to be
available
offline, and set the sync to happen on a schedule he prefers. This is
done
on Tools -> Send/Receive -> Send/Receive Settings -> Define
Send/Receive
Groups. Get the user to create a folder structure where he can have a
significant number of folders that seldom or never change. Then create
two
sets of send/receive settings. One of these will sync the whole
mailbox,
and it'll only be used occasionally when circumstances allow. The
other
will sync only the folders that commonly change. That one will be the
one
used most often when working remotely. Please note that although this
is a
manually created send/receive configuration and schedule, and it's not
cached mode, it still uses the OST. So you still need to make sure
he's in
Unicode mode.
You can fine tune the send/receive settings to only download headers.
Then
the messages will download when he requests them. There are a lot of
options for this - search Outlook Help for "work offline" or
"synchronize"
and see what you come up with.
Lastly, it seems to me that folders containing smaller numbers of items
sync
faster/better. My boss and I both have mailboxes containing large
numbers
of items. His are in about 100 folders, mine in maybe 15 or so. My
perception is that his performance is better than mine because even
though
he has many more folders, his contain more reasonable numbers of items
than
mine.
Your customer needs to understand that while some work and learning
curve
are going to go into this, it's to his benefit, and it's an attempt to
make
a currently unsatisfactory situation a lot better. He has to realize
that
there is no way to make a 12 GB mailbox perform like a 200 MB one, but
if he
configures everything properly, he'll be a lot happier than he is now.
"Wopster" <Wopster@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:4558E1C5-F5CE-491F-B70A-14AF56786547@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Hey all I need a little advice for a growing sbs problem of mine.
I have an sbs2k3 customer where one user has 12gb's of mail. Prior to
the
exsp2 installation, we were having to constantly monitor his mailbox
and
manually archive where necessary to free up space, his mailbox was
taking
approximately half the usable exchange space for all users in the
office.
After the installation exchsp2 installation we haven't had to monitor
it
as
much. Here is where the problems occur.
The customers mailbox hasn't been able to complete a sync in a very
long
time therefore he's missing some of his mail. My recommendation was
to let
it
sync for a very long time (read 4-6 hrs), his interpretation of long
was
1hr.
He is unhappy because his mail isn't synced and is slow. Here are
some
details of what I've tried to do.
#1 - This user is remote 99.99% of the time, he has outlook 2003
setup
with rpc over http. This as you can imagine takes a very long time to
sync.
He does a lot of flying and types a lot of email while in flight when
he
doesn't have an internet connection. OWA is out of the question.
#2 - Because I exmerged mail from their old server and imported it
into
the new one, the modified date on the messages is when the import
took
place.
So archiving is out of the question because it works off the modified
take
(which is now the date I installed the server). Besides that, the
customer
has several litigations that have been going on for years and he
needs
access
to email as far back as 98/99. What I ended up doing was setting up a
separate profile for his secretary (inoffice) where she could access
his
mailbox, and manually drag folders/messages to an archive file (she
knew
what
litigations where complete), however after moving large amounts of
his
because he's remote it takes forever to sync up.
#3 - PST files - I was thinking of popping mail to his system so
he
wouldn't have to sync but then we'd have to manage the 2gb file limit
and
he'd end up with 6 separate pst files.
#4 - Spam Filtering - I thought I could reduce his mailbox by
running
the IMF filter or cloudmark against it. However the customer didn't
receive 1
message he was expecting (and this was the day I set it up) and he
"can't
afford not to receive those messages and doesn't have time to look at
his
Junk Mail folder". So spam filtering has been disabled.
Knowing the limitations of the sbs2k3 software and outlook, and
knowing
how
important it is to try to keep the customer happy what would some of
you
recommend as an email solution in a situation like this?
.
- References:
- Re: SBS user with extremely large mailbox
- From: Dave Nickason [SBS MVP]
- Re: SBS user with extremely large mailbox
- From: Wopster
- Re: SBS user with extremely large mailbox
- From: Matt
- Re: SBS user with extremely large mailbox
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