Pst synchronisation

[teddysherri]

Hello,

We currently have a number of laptop users who travel around the country to our many satellite offices, which have very slow broadband connections due to their locations. They all have a personal drive which sits back at the head office and contains all their data.

I have trawled through various programs but all they seem to do it sync the whole Pst, which you can imagine takes a long time. What we want (if it's at all possible) is to copy their Pst's to their laptop and synchronise only the changes made to it with the network copy held at the head office.

Is this at all possible or is it just wishful thinking?

Thank you.

 

[58sniper]

Wishful thinking.

.pst files should never be stored on network shares. That's unsupported, and just asking for problems.

You don't mention what email server you're using - whether it's Exchange or some POP3 or IMAP service. If it's Exchange, consider configuring RPC over HTTPS on the Exchange server. Then dump the .pst files into Exchange, and have them connect directly to the server for their email. The first time they connect, it'll download all mail. But after that, it's a beautiful thing. They'll have direct access to the mailbox, and ALL Outlook features will work. No need to synchronize anything.

Pat Richard
Microsoft Exchange MVP

 

[teddysherri]

Hey Pat,

Thanks for the reply.

We are currently running Exchange 2003. The only reason that we have pst files is that our users have a 40mb mailbox limit. We dont want our users to store their pst's on their local disk due to them not being backed up.

So is their another way that we could use?

Thank you.

 

[58sniper]

So what you're saying is that people can't store more than 40MB on the drives on the mail server, but can store more than that on the drives of the file server? That doesn't make sense from a cost stand point, nor a supportability standpoint, nor an accountability standpoint.

You've essentially limited their access to older email (since OWA doesn't support .pst files), increased complexity, increased internal bandwidth usage, etc. You're actually costing yourself MORE money than if you left the mail in the mailbox.

Pat Richard
Microsoft Exchange MVP

 

[Zelandakh]

Disks are cheap on either a fileserver or a mail server. Ditch the PST files, simplify your life and that of your users.

 

[teddysherri]

Unfortunately however lovely that would be i am just a cog in the machine and have no power to make wholesale changes. Hence why i am here just asking for a little advice.

Thank you.

 

[megadan2000]

Hi,

I just posted the same response on another thread and the simple solution is to enable outlook cached mode. This will enable a cached copy of their mailbox on their local laptop. They can amend their mailbox as normal and then when they reconnect to the Exchange Server it will resync any changes made offline and update their mailbox.

 

[58sniper]

Online vs. cached mode isn't the issue here.

.pst files shouldn't be used in an Exchange environment. There is no need for them if things are properly sized and configured. As Zelandakh says - ditch the .pst files.

Pat Richard
Microsoft Exchange MVP