Exchange/Outlook archiving on C drive as PST?

[Jushin-Thunder-Liger]

In an effort to combat the ever growing mailbox size of my users, i was hoping to use this http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...f-5a6322f4fd01

to archive old mail as a PST on users HD so my backup tapes dont overflow (again).

Does this REPLACE the files in exchange, or simply copy them.

What i really want is for this to replace the files, freeing up server space.

Thanks for any help

[Ginger Tosser]

You could get users to archive then set a maximum mail box size on exchange.

[capcom_suicide]

In an effort to combat the ever growing mailbox size of my users, i was hoping to use this http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...f-5a6322f4fd01

to archive old mail as a PST on users HD so my backup tapes dont overflow (again).

Does this REPLACE the files in exchange, or simply copy them.

What i really want is for this to replace the files, freeing up server space.

Thanks for any help

Mail is held in Exchange as a Data Base.

Archiving out email to PST will do the following:

-Remove the Mail from the Exchange DB, and leave "White Space"

-Cause you to have no control over user mail backup/restore SLA (May not be an issue)

- Will not speed up backup, or give extra disk space unless you run the offline defra eseutil to recover the space. You will need 120% of DB size as free sapce/Network drive to do this.

If you have some budget look to an automated server side archive like www.kvsinc.com

Look to control your archive policy (if using the horrid PST) with a group policy object, consider using "Home Drives" for PST, if you have space on teh file server, and backup capability. Be aware Msoft don't technically support PST to network drive at PSS anymore....

Cheers

C_S

[Jushin-Thunder-Liger]

Mail is held in Exchange as a Data Base.

Archiving out email to PST will do the following:

-Remove the Mail from the Exchange DB, and leave "White Space"

-Cause you to have no control over user mail backup/restore SLA (May not be an issue)

- Will not speed up backup, or give extra disk space unless you run the offline defra eseutil to recover the space. You will need 120% of DB size as free sapce/Network drive to do this.

If you have some budget look to an automated server side archive like www.kvsinc.com

Look to control your archive policy (if using the horrid PST) with a group policy object, consider using "Home Drives" for PST, if you have space on teh file server, and backup capability. Be aware Msoft don't technically support PST to network drive at PSS anymore....

Cheers

C_S

Cheers guy's.

What i want to do is reduce the size of our backup before our tapes reach capacity. To do this i would like to archive all mail before 2005 on users C: drives (Then backed up to DVD) and clear this data off the server.

I only have 40 users and some of them have mailboxes over 1.5 Gb in size. Given our Travan tapes can hold a realistic 30Gb, these users are taking up a large chunk of backup space.

If my understanding is correct, archiving them as PST's WILL clear some space on the server? Not just copy the data?

Thanks again!

[ezg]

Just had the same problem with some of our users, but used ExMerge instead.

However as we have bigger backup tapes we have kept the pst's on there home folder on the network so that they are backed up in case the inevitable happens (and you know it will at some some stage) and the user "accidently" deletes it.

You could however put it on the users pc and back it up onto cd as I've had to do to allow all the users running delegate access on one users account to access that users old emails.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=429163EC-DCDF-47DC-96DA-1C12D67327D5&displaylang=en

[Jushin-Thunder-Liger]

I use ExMerge as a once a month backup device to extract all PST's and burn them to DVDr stored off site.
I have had a mailserver crash in Feb, i really dont like to talk about it..............

You cant have enough contingency against a mail server crash

[babs]

We have a small office but a similar problem in terms of mailbox sizes. The simple solution to do things the way you said for me, was to just get autoarchive running in outlook on each of the clients. That way you can specify the age of articles to archive, where you want the resulting .pst saved and it happens 'invisibly' to the clients.

[capcom_suicide]

Cheers guy's.

If my understanding is correct, archiving them as PST's WILL clear some space on the server? Not just copy the data?

Thanks again!

Yes, and no.

Lets say the Exchange DB is 10GB. Users pull out 1 GB of mail to PST (Via Autoarchive, that removes the original from the DB)

You then are left with: a 10GB DB. Still 10Gb for backup, still 10GB for restore. But is now has 1 GB of white space. New email growth can use white space, so the DB won't grow until it's used, but the OS can't and that's why the DB file size stays the same.

**BUT, if you have a disk that has 12GB of FREE SPACE you can recover this 1GB of "White Space" This is important for you, and reducing your backup size.

To recover the white space and end up with a 9GB DB you need to run an OFLLINE DEFRAG with eseutil:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;192185&sd=tech

NB: "Note Defragmenting a database requires free disk space equal to 110 percent of the size of the database being processed"

BUT BUT BUT, please do think about those PST's..... if they are not backed up, your users may lose email if they have C:\ drive failures. This may be legally problematic if your CEO requires mail for a court case.

Better to use an archive program like www.kvsinc.com that pulls mail out to a searchable SQL based file store.

But anyway, the notes above explain how to reduce your DB size, if you are sure about it.

Hope this helps. I've worked with Exchange since vesion 4.0, and I was very glad to import all PST's into the KVS vault....

/C_S

[babs]

Is that now Enterprise Vault (as the kvsinc link redirects to veritas, who I assume have borged them)? If so it's looking to be a pain as you can't buy v6.0 until Q3.

[Jushin-Thunder-Liger]

Yes, and no.

Lets say the Exchange DB is 10GB. Users pull out 1 GB of mail to PST (Via Autoarchive, that removes the original from the DB)

You then are left with: a 10GB DB. Still 10Gb for backup, still 10GB for restore. But is now has 1 GB of white space. New email growth can use white space, so the DB won't grow until it's used, but the OS can't and that's why the DB file size stays the same.

**BUT, if you have a disk that has 12GB of FREE SPACE you can recover this 1GB of "White Space" This is important for you, and reducing your backup size.

To recover the white space and end up with a 9GB DB you need to run an OFLLINE DEFRAG with eseutil:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;192185&sd=tech

NB: "Note Defragmenting a database requires free disk space equal to 110 percent of the size of the database being processed"

BUT BUT BUT, please do think about those PST's..... if they are not backed up, your users may lose email if they have C:\ drive failures. This may be legally problematic if your CEO requires mail for a court case.

Better to use an archive program like www.kvsinc.com that pulls mail out to a searchable SQL based file store.

But anyway, the notes above explain how to reduce your DB size, if you are sure about it.

Hope this helps. I've worked with Exchange since vesion 4.0, and I was very glad to import all PST's into the KVS vault....

/C_S

Cheers i apreciate the help
Sadly KVS is out of the question at the moment, just blown my budget with Exchange Agent for Veritas 10.
That is a good point about C drive crash, after all, ALL HD's crash in the end. However all mail from 2003 and 2004 in PST format will be burned to DVD and stored off-site so in case of disaster we have a hard copy.

Cheers again

[capcom_suicide]

Is that now Enterprise Vault (as the kvsinc link redirects to veritas, who I assume have borged them)? If so it's looking to be a pain as you can't buy v6.0 until Q3.

Yeah Veritas bought them, and now symantec bought Veritas!

Still a great product,

I also forgot to say, PST files on Outlook 95-2002 have a maximum size limit of 2GB. At this size they corrupt and are unreadable.

PST's formatted for "Outlook 2003 only" have an upper limit of 16TB.

Just for info.

/C_S