On Thu, May 19, 2011 at 11:23 AM, Evan Pettrey <[email protected]> wrote: > Greetings, > > there is no sign of slowed growth from a personnel standpoint.
Based on your previous responses about lack of money for upgrades the IT department is in a very bad position. Management is refusing to do anything but make the situation worse by hiring more people without also investing in the required infrastructure to support their growth. In context, if they hire one less staff member they can probably pay for all the infrastructure upgrades that they need and then some more. It's time to be very clear, in writing, about the risks that management is taking by growing the company without growing their infrastructure, an infrastructure already at capacity. In the same warning you will need solid plans and costs associated with building the company's email infrastructure to meet it's growth. It's critically important to tell them required solution(s) with the problem. > My questions are: > > * What specific quota sizes should I put in place? From what I've read > Microsoft recommends the .ost does not exceed 2gb and inboxes to not exceed > 5,000 items. Should I use this as the quotas we put in place or should I > enforce something less than that even? Some clarity needed here. Are you on an Exchange 2003 system? If so, yes, the 2GB mailbox size is an issue, but not as you describe. The issues are: * Exchange 2003 w/ service packs will support mailboxes bigger than 2GB, but not quotas above 2GB. Basically that means anyone with over a 2GB mailbox can't be capped with a quota until you get them to bring their mailbox back down to size. Also, exmerge will fail on those mailboxes. You'll need to use exmerge's date feature to pull emails in less than 2GB chunks by guestimating. * PST files in Office 2000 have a 2GB limit. If you go over this limit the PST file could become corrupt and all info lost. This is not a problem in office 2003 and later. In Exchange 2007 and later the mailbox sizes are much bigger. > > * How do I handle backlash from the worst offenders who are likely to gripe > the loudest when this is put in place? Obviously I'll have instructions in > place for everybody on how to archive their emails to .psts which they can > then back up on the network, but what else should we plan to do? Establish a policy that management supports and stick to it. Explain to them that the company doesn't have the resources at this time to support bigger mailboxes and that a proposal has been made to improve the company's infrastructure to meet staff's growing data requirements. It's also helpful to put the onus of data stewardship in the hands of managers. Have them deal with the employees who complain. Put a formal process in place for requesting more resources per department instead of per employee. Make the department justify why they need more resources and then be ready to quote them back the costs of their request. If they really need it, they'll pay for it. > > * What would you recommend as a timeline for the end users to clean up their > inboxes to prepare for the quotas? It may take a few weeks to put together the logistics and support of management, but publicly make it as short as possible. Don't drag things on -- it's more painful for everyone involved. Pull the bandaid off quickly. :) > > Any additional guidance or recommendations would be greatly appreciated. Document every conversation your department has about this issue with management. Give them no more than three GOOD solutions to the problem with clear benefits and risks to each one. Make sure they clearly understand what risks they are accepting so that if something blows up they can't cut off your head. I've been brought into three Exchange situations like the one you describe. Infrastructure is maxed out and management has it's head stuck in the sand because they're not really aware of what's going on. It's your job to make sure they don't ignore it and know the potential consequences if they do ignore it. Gil _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
