How large is too large for Info Stores, Groups, in Exchange

[rliebsch]

per the request of management: poll is rescinded

In managing Exchange for several companies over the last long while, this is the largest I have seen my exchange stores (60GB and growing), yet, this is the smallest number of people I have worked for (60users). I didn't see this volume working with 2500 users across several Exchange servers.

Having said that, I have had 3 catastrophic failures in the last 3 years (all hardware related, sadly). Each of them took tremendous lengths of time to complete. Even database defrags and verifications take seemingly forever. Not to mention mailbox level backups.

This all being groundwork for the question:
How are Exchange administrators mitigating the increased usage of Exchange as file and message storage versus the "safe and standard" operation of an Exchange environment? I have users with 10's of thousands of messages alone. How are you covering yourselves in the event of a disaster to decrease downtime and maintenance intervals?

How many users are you putting on per Exchange Server? How many Information Stores per Exchange Server? How many Storage Groups per store?
Are you using quotas?

Are there averages as well as published "highs" for recommended usage? Are there statistical high end anomalies willing to share.

Hopefully, this is a question someone else would find this exchange useful.

 

[wdoellefeld]

In my experience there has never been an easy answer for this. Sometimes if users only knew how unsafe what they feel their safety net is.

It all boils down to what you can get the higher ups to buy off on and support. I've seen CEOs with 6 gig mailboxes and no limits. Also, planning and/or knowing exactly what your capacity can be really helps the sell factor of limits.

I personally like the limits of;
Executive staff (VPs and above) at 1.5 gig
Mid-level at 500mb
Support type staff at 125mb
Worker bees at 35mb

These would be the hard limits. I also, like you it seems, spread over different stores.

I also try and make it a point to teach teach teach PST files and suggest methods of archiving (by quarter, year, whatever).

FRCP

http://www.frcp.net

 

[Zelandakh]

I run away from PSTs as fast as my little fat legs will take me.

MS recommend 30GB per store, as many stores per storage group as your version of Exchange will take (reduces RAM usage) and as many disks as you can get hold of.

30GB is a bit conservative for my liking. I reckon a decent server with a fibre RAID array can easily take 60GB if the logs are elsewhere.

I don't agree with quotas - disks are cheap enough, processors are very fast these days. The user hits their quota, emails stop coming in and they can't do their job. This hits the bottom line.

Database defrags basically don't need doing unless there is a massive hardware problem. Backups should be done at high end by Backup Exec on a store level and then use Aelita Recovery Manager to drill into it.

 

[spike0724]

I too stay away from PST's... Each person here has 100MB limit. We teach the user community to save the attachments of with the email to the file server. My biggest rebut is that Exchange is a database NOT a file server, save your files on the designates server and keep the database clean(improves performance).

S. Mike Harris

"If there we 90 seconds in a minute, I might get everything done in a day" - S. M. Harris