What mailbox sizes can we have with 438GB of space? 1

[shadowfax1066]

Hi, what mailbox sizes can we have with 438GB of space on an Exchnage 2003 server? We have about 500 users, we are not sure if it's compressed etc....

Thanks

 

[ntinlin]

Well first of all you need to keep space free for doing offline defrags equivalent to size of largest database you are going to have.
You do get Single Instance Storage but there is no easy way to calculate what benefit this gives you.

I'd say set aside about 80Gb for defrags etc. then pretty much split the remaining between your users but lop off 20% or so for expansion. So you'd get about 438-80 = 358 /500 = 716Mb x 0.8 = 572Mb per user. Split stores and
databases accordingly.

This is what I'd do so don't take it as read that it is a good idea.

We don't really put space limits on ours here though, we do retention periods of 6 months on inbox, 2 months on sent items etc. But that is for historical reasons and because our users would jump up and down on top of us if they couldn't send mail because of enforced mailbox size limits.

 

[shadowfax1066]

Thanks what's the score on PST files in Exchange 2003, in our Exchnage 5.5 environment we have PST files and the horrid 2GB limit and we have to repaired them etc - we hate it. Any improvements?

Andy

 

[AdmanOK]

Use Outlook 2003 and create Unicode PST files that have a 100GB limit! We had to do this for a few of our "power users" that wanted to archive everything.

 

[ntinlin]

I'd limit the size of each PST file to 650Mb each or so.
I seem to remember a new entry in group policy for OL2003 where you could set the sizes for Unicode and non-unicode files.

While the database format of the new PST's is a bit more robust if your users are notebook rather than desktop based splitting them up means it is easier for backing up to server etc. i.e. Ones that they only ever refer to and don't update won't need to be chucked onto the server every day whereas if they just have the one constantly updated one they'll have to sit for hours chucking it on there. If of course they bother doing backups.

 

[Zelandakh]

If I had Exchange I would not be using PST files!

Don't cap the mailboxes at all - it should take them a while to fill that much space. Concentrate instead on backing it up in one hit. By the time they fill it, you'll probably be able to slap some new disks on downstream and use the 438GB as trans logs...

<signature for rent>

 

[JohnTVL]

Are you only using a single exchange server? Is it Std or Enterprise edition? Cos in Std edition the priv DB can only be a max of 16GB! So it wouldnt matter if you had 450GB of disk space free!

Dont forget that the PST's wont be avialable in webmail either.

Just seems to be assumed that he has more than one server and that it is Ent Edition.