Custom Mailbox Size Warning Message 1

[exchangeboy]

Hello,

I have an Exchange 2003 SP2 4 node A/A/A/P Cluster. My boss wants to add a custom message for the warning which is at 450 MB and the stop send/receive that is 500 MB.

Our situation:
Users do not fully read the 450 MB warning message and they go nuts thinking that their mailbox is not working, when in reality it is fine.

Research has brought me to find this:

http://www.msexchange.org/articles/Customizing-Mailbox-Limit-Warnings-Quota-Message-Service.html

My Question:
The process does not look that difficult, and is pretty straight forward with exceptions to the mailbox and PST setup. Do any of you Exchange Administrators use this to create the custom message? If so, what was your architechture build? Did you have any major issues?

I have concerns with the dll and registry modifications. As well as the impact for future patching and service packs.

Can someone make me feel better about having to do this?

Any help is much appreciated.

Thanks!

 

[Zelandakh]

Personally I would approach management and ask why you've got tens of thousands of dollars in hardware covering one of the most difficult to implement solutions within the IT arena - namely a clustered Exchange server. Yet you are implementing quotas.

Can you not just go to unlimited mailboxes? In practice, users don't actually all go to 20GB mailboxes immediately but in this day and age with disks at the prices they are, even with 2,000 users that is only 1TB as you stand - you can buy a RAID array of that size for peanuts.

 

[noblehill]

I have to disagree with Zelandakh here. I think having unlimited mailbox size is a security risk: for instance if a denial of service -type attack spams your users, it's a good thing if mailboxes reach their limits. And you also have to consider backing up and restoring the mailbox data.

I have not customized messages, but I'm familiar with the procedure, I'd say go for it, but back up first.

 

[Zelandakh]

OK, I hear what you are saying. I've got no limits in place but if I did have limits of say 10GB then that is an awful lot of spam to fill it up.

Since an unlimited mailbox quota does not equate to unlimited size mail servers, your top 10% mailboxes will grow significantly but most other users will continue to keep modest mailboxes.

With LTO-4 Ultrium libraries running correctly, I see no reason why a 1TB Exchange server should take more than 6 hours to back up, removing the onus on users to spend non productive time housekeeping and allowing them to get on with their work, namely to help make a profitable company.

 

[Knackster]

But, if you ever have to export a mailbox with exmerge, if I am correct, you can't use exmerge with a mailbox over 2 gig in size.

If I am mistaken, someone please correct me.

Chris
IT Manager
Houston, Texas

 

[Zelandakh]

You can exmerge FROM a large mailbox but the destination PST must be under 2GB. For any punter in that situation, we just exmerge in chunks either by year or folder, whatever is appropriate. One lady had 2GB of Sent Items, 2GB of Inbox and 2GB of filing so we just made 3 PST files.

Another had over 10,000 items in each of Inbox and Sent Items and it was simpler to exmerge by year into 1999-2004, 2005-2006 and 2007.

Not greatly problematic and they didn't need to do any housekeeping.

 

[Knackster]

Thanks for clearing that up Z.

Chris
IT Manager
Houston, Texas

 

[Zelandakh]

No problem - thanks for the star.