Exmerge Question

[j93saturn]

I started useing Exmerge as a brick level backup, along side Veritas. I have a couple of users who refuse to keep their mailboxes clean and corporate policy will not let me put limits on them either. Does anyone know anyway to get past the 2GB pst file size limit? MS website says migrate to 2003. Corporate policy also wants everything backed up, so I can not limit what I back up. Any ideas?


James
Security +
MCP NT 4.0 / 2000 / 2003
MCSA 2000
MCSE NT 4.0

 

[AlexIT]

How are you even backing up the whole IS? With 8 of these users Exchange hits the 16GB limit and its dead...

Let corporate know that you cannot backup a MB when it reaches a certain size (tell them 500MB-1GB to allow for "duplicates".) If you cannot apply limits to the size of mailboxes, and should the worst occur, ALL the mail in the users account will be lost. They will support you in this if they are not terminally stupid.

Then request that those users with large mailboxes move some items to offline storage (they can drag and drop to a file on their desktop) so that they can still send and recieve e-mail after you impose the CORPORATE limits "next week."

If the users don't clean up you apply the limits anyway and ignore their phone calls when they can't e-mail anymore.

If no one will support you its time for a few MB's (two large, one small) to have some virus "corrupt" them (i.e. start by making a exmerge of the offending accounts but only for mail newer than X days so you can fit under the limit. Now you delete the user, then re-create their account, then exmerge the other large MB users PST to the wrong account...theres mail but it doesn't look like mine and I cannot open ANYTHING. Tell them "it happened to three people last night, Steve has ALL his e-mail back but he had a MUCH SMALLER MB, for you two I could only recover mail that was newer than X days old in yours because it was so big, I will try to get more but I think its gone for good. I should have the server fixed in a couple more days so this cannot happen again." Now apply the limits and THEN report to corporate that you HAD to so that if this happes again you can fix the server much faster (instead of two 18 hour days.)

Once there has been an Exchange failure, everyone will be much more supportive of preventative maintainence and nightly backups.


Not that I would ever DO this...

 

[j93saturn]

How are you even backing up the whole IS? With 8 of these users Exchange hits the 16GB limit and its dead..."

I was referring to the 2GB pst after Exmerge has exported the data, thus removing single instance storage. The IS is not near 16GB. I only have a couple of users pushing the 2GB limit exported pst.

As for your ideas, thank you. If I can not get around the 2GB pst file size I have other alternatives.

Like I already said, I am running this along side Veritas. Exmerge is not really needed. However, in the event of a true disaster, using pst files to create a new DB is a lot nicer than restoring to a potentially forever bad DB.



James
Security +
MCP NT 4.0 / 2000 / 2003
MCSA 2000
MCSE NT 4.0