Mail limits

[GaryRumson]

Does anyone know what is the suggested limit is for mailboxes on an exchange system? We have a company who currently has no limits however I remember reading some where about limiting to below 2GB for restore and performance issues.

 

[TruBlu01]

Don't know about that. We use mailbox limits 50MB for most users, managers get 100mb and execs get about 250mb. I think 2gig mailboxes for everyone would be crazy. Not to mention backing up 100 users @ 2 gig a piece.

 

[Spirit]

I disagree whole heartedly.

I find Exchange to be a very efficent document management system rather than a mere mail system.

We have to keep some quotes / messages for several years at a minimum because a lot of our contracts take that long to complete. I also have several users with far more than 2GB mailboxes.

The confusion here is a PST / OST can only handle 2GB before corruption will be more likely.

Its horses for courses. We regularily send emails exceeding 100MB (CAD Drawings) so a limit of 100MB wouldn't be very sensible for us at all.

You have to evaluate each company / user / department individually taking into account Hardware / software / network limitations.

Iain

 

[forbsy]

I'd have to agree with TruBlu01 on this. It's true that one needs to evaluate one's needs when establishing mailbox limits. I'd have to say that an extremely important part of that assessment is restoration times. If you have an exec with a 3GB mailbox and it becomes corrupted, you'd better be 100% certain that he/she is fully aware it's going to take a long time to restore it. Obviously, restoration times will depend on the types of backup hardware/software you have in place. Also, if mailbox store databases are ridiculous in size because you allow unlimited or enormous mailboxes for users, you will once again run the risk of extremely lengthy restores.
There's nothing wrong with restricting user mailboxes to reasonable limits and configuring users's email clients to filter large emails to a personal folder (which is either on local disk, or a dedicated file share on the network).

 

[TruBlu01]

We also just set a recipient policy to delete all mail older than 120 days. (sarbanes) If they want to keep it, copy it to a folder on your pc. Every Monday there is a system attendant mail telling what's gonna be deleted. All users have been given a doc on how to save mail outside of outlook.