Continued Voicemail Storage Issues

[SteveLord]

I brought this up back in the summer and this problem still plagues me. I spent an entire week going through our user list and eliminating old mailboxes, thinking I was going to put a big dent in the storage. Only got me down to 92%. And this was after removing about 24 boxes.

I am still constantly getting filled up. Today, its 98% and the user list, inaccurate as it can be...is only showing 16minutes used. But I know a lot of those 0 storage boxes still have old messages in them.

I've checked all my Classes of Service and they are to retain ReadMessages for no more than 10 days for most people, and 15 days for the others.

Is there any features or anything else that could be consuming storage like this? Its very time consuming manually logging into each mailbox to see whats there.

Also, my TEXT volume is at 93%...whatever that is.

Thanks as always.

IT Admin (PBX Newbie)
Nortel Option11
Version 1411
Release 21
Issue 7+
MerMail 10.7.2

 

[jjinkins]

Log into Meridian Mail, choose 5 for system status and maintenance, choose 7 for sytem event and error reports, choose 1 for seer retrieval, put in 91 for seer class, and choose a date about 10 days back. Go through all of the pages that come up and you will see entries for "stale" mailboxes. These are mailboxes that have not had any login activity for 30 days or more. This will allow you to find unused mailboxes that people may still be leaving messages in. I do this a couple times a year in all my Meridian Mails. I hope this helps.

 

[yyrkroon]

if you have more than just the fedault language installed, that is going to eat up quite a lot of storage per language

 

[SteveLord]

 91- 4  5/18 06:42   System   Inf       1    Null
Des:    MWIAUDIT VS1: Starting the Audit
 91- 2  5/18 06:42   Error    *         1    Null
Des:    MWIAUDIT VS1: Corruption in user RAFA2540 on node 1 rc= 1002
 91- 2  5/18 06:43   Error    *         1    Null
Des:    MWIAUDIT VS1: Failed to open profile of PAVO2628 rc= 1007
 91- 5  5/18 06:46   System   Inf       1    Null
Des:    MWIAUDIT VS1: The Audit is Finished.

This is what I got every time. Even when doing oldest to newest.

I just got informed again today about it being full...which it is. And this week I had gone through and deleted 48 old messages people had, and killed 2 more mailboxes. Barely put a dent in it.

There's gotta be something else. Maybe I should reset all the passwords, so I can get into some of those people that have customized theirs.

This thing is becoming more frequent and is just plain annoying.


IT Admin (PBX Newbie)
Nortel Option11
Version 1411
Release 21
Issue 7+
MerMail 10.7.2

 

[PERRYPJ]

THOSE SEER ERRORS ARE MINORS, JUST SAYING THAT IT FAILED TO COMPLETE A MWI AUDIT ON THAT MAILBOX

OLD ROLMEN WORKING ON NORTELS

 

[phnechic]

Is it possible that you need another node? We had to add one a few years back, and then move mailboxes from one node to another to balance the usage. I don't know if the "corruption" message that is showing up could indicate a problem that is sucking up space or not. Anyone else know?

 

[SteveLord]

I did an audit through the special tools menu and it did nothing. Time to swim through the boxes one by one again I guess. Or pull out some charisma and convince the highups for a storage upgrade.




IT Admin (PBX Newbie)
Nortel Option11
Version 1411
Release 21
Issue 7+
MerMail 10.7.2

 

[PERRYPJ]

You have not mentioned if you have check the Operational Mesurements top see if you are storing anything. This will drive your storage sky high.

OLD ROLMEN WORKING ON NORTELS

 

[SteveLord]

You mean this?

Operational Measurement Options

Collect Traffic Data:                     Disabled

Traffic Period Start (hh:mm):             01:00

Traffic Period End (hh:mm):               01:00

Traffic Commit Interval (hh:mm):          01:00

Number of days of Traffic Data stored:    8

Collect User Usage/Session Trace Data:    Disabled

Number of days of User Usage Data stored: 7

Collect Audit Trail Data:                 Disabled

Number of days of Audit Data stored:      7

Shutdown Audit Trail at Volume Full (%):  85  %

IT Admin (PBX Newbie)
Nortel Option11
Version 1411
Release 21
Issue 7+
MerMail 10.7.2

 

[PERRYPJ]

yes, it looks like everything is disabled

OLD ROLMEN WORKING ON NORTELS

 

[SteveLord]

Which would make me think that if they were enabled, it would be consuming more space.

Im tempted to spend a day(s) removing/rebuilding them all about 10 at a time. Although, Im sure that will do very little, just like everything else.

Its just annoying how increasingly often this keeps happening and I've run out of tweaks to do.


IT Admin (PBX Newbie)
Nortel Option11
Version 1411
Release 21
Issue 7+
MerMail 10.7.2

 

[SteveLord]

I think the drive is only like 350MB. Are there cost effective upgrade options out there...that don't include CallPilot?


IT Admin (PBX Newbie)
Nortel Option11
Version 1411
Release 21
Issue 7+
MerMail 10.7.2

 

[SteveLord]

I am pulling some necromancy on this thread...for I am constantly hounded with this issue and I feel I have exhausted all options that I am aware of at least.

Every week - 2 weeks, our operator calls me complaining that customers/other business associates complain they cant leave messages to so and so's voicemail because its full.

This means I have to dial into everyone's voicemail on the list...find old messages have been listened to, delete them or ask others to go through their new ones.

Problem with this, is that some of these people only have a few messages and they all say "why must I be so vigilant deleting them, it wasn't like this years ago" etc etc.

Upgrading is out of the question, unless its cheap or free. And by cheap, I mean a few hundred bucks.

I've even posed this to a consultant we've used many times in the past. He had no immediate solution, but mentioned something about running a garbage demon. Anyone know what that is?

Our voicemail is at a constant 95% or higher, I am exhausted going through the mailboxes and calling people and having this distract me from my other work.

My boss wants a solution. And a cheap one at that. I just deleted 8 voicemail boxes from departments and/or employees that are no longer here. But I spent 3 days in the past killing 20somethin boxes and it still didn't buy me much time.

Help. Thanks.

IT Admin (PBX Newbie)
Nortel Option11
Version 1411
Release 21
Issue 7+
MerMail 10.7.2

 

[DocVic]

Backup you whole system to Tape and then to another tape. (Twice!) Find your Keycode sheet and the MerMail System Tape. Get a 3.0GB drive (Seagate SCSI) and reload MerMail from scratch. Make sure all of your data is backed up.
320 meg is not enough storage (unless it's really a 3 gig drive, then you have problems.) Replace the drive.

DocVic

 

[notme11]

I used to have that issue and what I found was that even if you limit the mailbox size to 5 minutes of space. you can still leave messages on that mailbox up to the max in the whole mail. I've had mailboxes with more than 5 hrs worth of massages.
The thing that I found is that some users kept all their massages and would not delete them, mailboxes are so that someone can leave a message, once they get it they should delete it.
if you run a mailbox search look at the minutes uses and I'll bet you'll find some users have tons of messages stored.

 

[janaya]

why don't you find all users that have not logged in in over 60 days, then 45 days, then 30 days and start checking these.

Are you getting ERR4019 errors on the PBX. These are mailboxes with no programmed phone to activate a light. Maybe there are a lot of mailboxes that need to be removed.

Then just do a find on your whole system and you will see who is abusing the storage. It will show you in minutes who is consuming the most storage space.

If all else fails, go into the Class of Service options and set is so you only keep read messages for 2 days and look at it again on Monday. Only keep unread messages for 11 days (this is so that people on vacation will still have messages on monday, but old mailboxes will be emptied).

John

 

[PERRYPJ]

HOW MUCH VOICE STORAGE ARE YOU SHOWING IN TOOLS

OLD ROLMEN WORKING ON NORTELS

 

[MagnaRGP]

Yep. Change the class of service to auto purge read messages after say 5 days.

Then when people complain, tell them that VM is a call answering service, NOT a message storage device. If they want to store their messages, they should either write them down or record them onto a personal digital recorder. This procedure is necessary to maintain operation of your mail if the abuse of the system continues.

This alone will be the impetus for new funds to upgrade your unit as I'll wager a beer that the worst offenders are also the ones who hold the purse strings.

 

[NastyNed2]

Janaya-

You mentioned a setting for UNREAD messages. Can you help me find that? I've found the one for READ messages, but would like to limit the retention on UNREAD messages as well. I have some mailboxes that are over 1000 days stale (not an extra zero!). I have to be careful, though, because some mailboxes are actually mis-programmed announcements or menus that are collecting unwanted messages. I'm new enough here that I don't want to delete the wrong thing over at City Hall! They have their own phone guys that have access to my system (the central system for the whole City) who aren't as vigilant about removing mailboxes when they out a phone.

 

[SteveLord]

I know this is an old thread and you guys might not have read through the other posts on this...but

I've gone through and deleted ALL unused voicemail boxes many times before. I once spent 3 days going through them 1by1 and killed off about 2 dozen. Everything thats left IS USED by employees. Compared to a year ago, when we had several more employees and compared to several years ago (before my time and when everyone tells me this thing worked fine and we never had problems) there was a lot more employees.

So that will always be in question. And I wonder myself.

As for the COS.

Read messages kept: 5 days (changing to 2)
Voice storage limit in min: 3
Max Message Length: 2min

This is after I've already made reductions in everything. However, they dont see to actually work...as there have been messages several weeks old sometimes.

My worst offender happens to be our Chief Financial Officer. He gets calls all day long and he is usually the hog of the storage. But there's no chance in hell I can get any of that to change, except to ask him to go through it more often...which I've already done. What really stinks is when he goes on vacation or is sick!

I'll count the exact amount of mailboxes we have here and report back. Gotta take care of a few other things first.




IT Admin (PBX Newbie)
Nortel Option11
Version 1411
Release 21
Issue 7+
MerMail 10.7.2