Cached vs. online mode

[danomac]

We have had issues with users' shared calendars being out of sync. I recently discovered that by putting affected users on the 'online' mode corrects these problems.

What I've been googling around for is a comparison between online and cached mode listing advantages and disadvantages, but I haven't found anything recent.

Does anyone know of one? I'm currently contemplating a GPO that forces online mode.

We do have a slow WAN link and cached mode can take a while to synchronize larger mailboxes at some remote offices. I suppose being directly connected would lessen the bandwidth but be more prone to network hiccups.

 

[58sniper]

There is seldom an advantage to using online mode. It cause a LOT more traffic between the client and the server; in the event of a LAN or server hiccup, the user loses access to all existing mail; some rules don't work in online mode.

Pat Richard MVP
Plan for performance, and capacity takes care of itself. Plan for capacity, and suffer poor performance.

http://www.exchangeblogs.com/

 

[danomac]

I've done some more googling and discovered having calendars in cached mode causes sync issues. We currently have people double-booking and the like due to the problems with cached mode.

The problem is nobody seems to have a solution for it. Waiting a day (in some cases from what I've read) for it to sync is not an option. Some appointments added literally three weeks ago are not appearing for some users.

The users are not savvy enough to recreate their OST files when a problem arises, and most won't even recognize there's a problem as some appointments that should be there simply aren't there.

We do have the occasional problem with email as well, but those are much less frequent.

Anyone run across this particular problem before and have any type of solution?

 

[zbnet]

I'd vote for your solution of online mode, if you think it fixes your problem and doesn't cause you other issues.