Re: [Exchange] RE: Exchange User Mailbox Size Limits

[Tom Miller]

I have used Barracuda's on-premise and cloud archiving tool.  It works
great, and you set the retention policies.  Users can delete and you'll
still have a tool for discovery.  You can also allow users to search their
own archives via the Barracuda portal or an Outlook add-on.  you can use
that tool to justify low storage quotas, since messages are in the archive
anyway.  You can use it with on-premise or Office 365 and I assume
non-Exchange systems.

Based on the level of the tool you purchase, you can also replicate your
folder structure.

There are other tools like Mimecast.  Barracuda is just what I've used a
number of times without issue.

On Wed, Apr 19, 2017 at 5:12 PM, Michael B. Smith <mich...@smithcons.com>
wrote:

> Archives are challenges – for both users and administrators.
>
>
>
> Users think their **stuff** has disappeared. Administrators have to track
> multiple “real” mailboxes (and quotas) that theoretically are a single
> logical mailbox, instead of one mailbox – never mind the searching hassles.
>
>
>
> Outlook is also optimized now for a single quick local search and then
> fires off a search request to the server – and it can be configured to not
> even try the local cache first (as you want to do in a VDI environment).
> Searching the archive(s) is just more hassle.
>
>
>
> I’m not quoting a Microsoft opinion by saying that personal archive are a
> mistake – it’s my personal opinion. But I think it’s clear based on the
> evolution of records management in Exchange and the other Office Servers
> that MSFT has also come to that conclusion.
>
>
>
> *From:* listsad...@lists.myitforum.com [mailto:listsadmin@lists.
> myitforum.com] *On Behalf Of *Maglinger, Paul
> *Sent:* Wednesday, April 19, 2017 4:25 PM
> *To:* 'exchange@lists.myitforum.com'
> *Subject:* [Exchange] RE: Exchange User Mailbox Size Limits
>
>
>
> Thanks for the clarification Michael.  I’ve find your comment about the
> personal archives interesting.  Can you elaborate (beside what I see as
> moving **stuff** from one mailbox database to another and ultimately
> having lots of **stuff** in 2 places now instead of one)?  That, and
> personal archives seem to be a particular challenge to eDiscovery and 3rd
> party applications such as Exchange Manager that seem to have trouble
> getting into them to poke around.
>
>
>
> Paul
>
>
>
> *From:* listsad...@lists.myitforum.com [mailto:listsadmin@lists.
> myitforum.com <listsad...@lists.myitforum.com>] *On Behalf Of *Michael B.
> Smith
> *Sent:* Wednesday, April 19, 2017 2:55 PM
> *To:* exchange@lists.myitforum.com
> *Subject:* [Exchange] RE: Exchange User Mailbox Size Limits
>
>
>
> Google doesn’t back it up. Neither does Office 365. They just have
> “another copy” in a remote datacenter.
>
>
>
> Office 365 keeps two current copies in your local datacenter, another
> current copy in a remote datacenter, and a seven day lagged copy in a
> remote datacenter.
>
>
>
> I don’t know the google specifics, but I’m certain it is similar.
>
>
>
> However, in both cases, remember that they are NOT using “enterprise class
> disk subsystems”. They are using JBOD. So disk is cheap and failures are
> expected.
>
>
>
> Personal archives were a mistake. You can see that MSFT is heading in that
> direction by increasing primary mailbox sizes from 25 GB to 50 GB and now
> 100 GB…
>
>
>
> I have a lot of clients that just gave up on quotas in the 2013 timeframe.
> Even more in the 2016 timeframe. Others keep quotas just in case of mail
> loops. Some still keep quotas but, as Paul points out, they are
> increasingly difficult to justify.
>
>
>
> *From:* listsad...@lists.myitforum.com [mailto:listsadmin@lists.
> myitforum.com <listsad...@lists.myitforum.com>] *On Behalf Of *Maglinger,
> Paul
> *Sent:* Tuesday, April 18, 2017 1:51 PM
> *To:* 'exchange@lists.myitforum.com'
> *Subject:* [Exchange] RE: Exchange User Mailbox Size Limits
>
>
>
> Ooo… a can of worms!
>
>
>
> Our default for most users is PSAR at 160MB
>
> Our “special” people get PSARs somewhere between 200MB and 500MB – the
> higher levels mostly to Marketing and Real Estate folks who can’t get their
> vendors to use sftp for ridiculously large graphic and CAD files.  That
> being said, we have a 20MB limit on incoming mail.  We have one exec who is
> capped at 1.5GB and another at 2GB (20,000 and 28,000 items respectively).
> The justification for increasing the mailbox limit is usually “if my
> mailbox fills up I’ll miss important email”.  So you increase it again, it
> fills up, increase, it fills, rinse, repeat, rinse…
>
>
>
> We currently have a group of users using Exc

[Exchange] RE: Exchange User Mailbox Size Limits

[Michael B. Smith]

Archives are challenges - for both users and administrators.

Users think their *stuff* has disappeared. Administrators have to track 
multiple "real" mailboxes (and quotas) that theoretically are a single logical 
mailbox, instead of one mailbox - never mind the searching hassles.

Outlook is also optimized now for a single quick local search and then fires 
off a search request to the server - and it can be configured to not even try 
the local cache first (as you want to do in a VDI environment). Searching the 
archive(s) is just more hassle.

I'm not quoting a Microsoft opinion by saying that personal archive are a 
mistake - it's my personal opinion. But I think it's clear based on the 
evolution of records management in Exchange and the other Office Servers that 
MSFT has also come to that conclusion.

From: listsad...@lists.myitforum.com [mailto:listsad...@lists.myitforum.com] On 
Behalf Of Maglinger, Paul
Sent: Wednesday, April 19, 2017 4:25 PM
To: 'exchange@lists.myitforum.com'
Subject: [Exchange] RE: Exchange User Mailbox Size Limits

Thanks for the clarification Michael.  I've find your comment about the 
personal archives interesting.  Can you elaborate (beside what I see as moving 
*stuff* from one mailbox database to another and ultimately having lots of 
*stuff* in 2 places now instead of one)?  That, and personal archives seem to 
be a particular challenge to eDiscovery and 3rd party applications such as 
Exchange Manager that seem to have trouble getting into them to poke around.

Paul

From: listsad...@lists.myitforum.com<mailto:listsad...@lists.myitforum.com> 
[mailto:listsad...@lists.myitforum.com] On Behalf Of Michael B. Smith
Sent: Wednesday, April 19, 2017 2:55 PM
To: exchange@lists.myitforum.com<mailto:exchange@lists.myitforum.com>
Subject: [Exchange] RE: Exchange User Mailbox Size Limits

Google doesn't back it up. Neither does Office 365. They just have "another 
copy" in a remote datacenter.

Office 365 keeps two current copies in your local datacenter, another current 
copy in a remote datacenter, and a seven day lagged copy in a remote datacenter.

I don't know the google specifics, but I'm certain it is similar.

However, in both cases, remember that they are NOT using "enterprise class disk 
subsystems". They are using JBOD. So disk is cheap and failures are expected.

Personal archives were a mistake. You can see that MSFT is heading in that 
direction by increasing primary mailbox sizes from 25 GB to 50 GB and now 100 
GB...

I have a lot of clients that just gave up on quotas in the 2013 timeframe. Even 
more in the 2016 timeframe. Others keep quotas just in case of mail loops. Some 
still keep quotas but, as Paul points out, they are increasingly difficult to 
justify.

From: listsad...@lists.myitforum.com<mailto:listsad...@lists.myitforum.com> 
[mailto:listsad...@lists.myitforum.com] On Behalf Of Maglinger, Paul
Sent: Tuesday, April 18, 2017 1:51 PM
To: 'exchange@lists.myitforum.com'
Subject: [Exchange] RE: Exchange User Mailbox Size Limits

Ooo... a can of worms!

Our default for most users is PSAR at 160MB
Our "special" people get PSARs somewhere between 200MB and 500MB - the higher 
levels mostly to Marketing and Real Estate folks who can't get their vendors to 
use sftp for ridiculously large graphic and CAD files.  That being said, we 
have a 20MB limit on incoming mail.  We have one exec who is capped at 1.5GB 
and another at 2GB (20,000 and 28,000 items respectively).  The justification 
for increasing the mailbox limit is usually "if my mailbox fills up I'll miss 
important email".  So you increase it again, it fills up, increase, it fills, 
rinse, repeat, rinse...

We currently have a group of users using Exchange Personal Archives with 
Retention Policies and Tags.  These currently have no limits on them which is 
doing a great job of proving that the more space you give a user the more 
"stuff" they will put in there.  Case in point with the mailbox limits.  It 
also proves that users will put the longest retention tag on everything they 
keep.  The other users are still using PSTs for now, which would be migrated 
into Personal Archives if we continue to move that direction.  And we're 
talking terabytes in that alone.

The main issue here isn't the storage.  I could easily throw terabytes at the 
servers to accommodate.  The issue is backup and recovery.  I know, I know, 
we've been told that if we're running a DAG that tape backups are necessarily 
needed but tape backup is part of our DR strategy.  The problem is if you're 
going to back up your mailbox databases it has to go somewhere, whether on tape 
or disk-to-disk.  We could backup to the cloud but there is an expense to that 
as well.

And it's hard to impose quotas on mailboxes without the users pointing to 
Google mail and saying "They give me 15GB!!!  Why can't we have 15GB???"  The 
fact is that Go

[Exchange] RE: Exchange User Mailbox Size Limits

[Michael B. Smith]

Google doesn't back it up. Neither does Office 365. They just have "another 
copy" in a remote datacenter.

Office 365 keeps two current copies in your local datacenter, another current 
copy in a remote datacenter, and a seven day lagged copy in a remote datacenter.

I don't know the google specifics, but I'm certain it is similar.

However, in both cases, remember that they are NOT using "enterprise class disk 
subsystems". They are using JBOD. So disk is cheap and failures are expected.

Personal archives were a mistake. You can see that MSFT is heading in that 
direction by increasing primary mailbox sizes from 25 GB to 50 GB and now 100 
GB...

I have a lot of clients that just gave up on quotas in the 2013 timeframe. Even 
more in the 2016 timeframe. Others keep quotas just in case of mail loops. Some 
still keep quotas but, as Paul points out, they are increasingly difficult to 
justify.

From: listsad...@lists.myitforum.com [mailto:listsad...@lists.myitforum.com] On 
Behalf Of Maglinger, Paul
Sent: Tuesday, April 18, 2017 1:51 PM
To: 'exchange@lists.myitforum.com'
Subject: [Exchange] RE: Exchange User Mailbox Size Limits

Ooo... a can of worms!

Our default for most users is PSAR at 160MB
Our "special" people get PSARs somewhere between 200MB and 500MB - the higher 
levels mostly to Marketing and Real Estate folks who can't get their vendors to 
use sftp for ridiculously large graphic and CAD files.  That being said, we 
have a 20MB limit on incoming mail.  We have one exec who is capped at 1.5GB 
and another at 2GB (20,000 and 28,000 items respectively).  The justification 
for increasing the mailbox limit is usually "if my mailbox fills up I'll miss 
important email".  So you increase it again, it fills up, increase, it fills, 
rinse, repeat, rinse...

We currently have a group of users using Exchange Personal Archives with 
Retention Policies and Tags.  These currently have no limits on them which is 
doing a great job of proving that the more space you give a user the more 
"stuff" they will put in there.  Case in point with the mailbox limits.  It 
also proves that users will put the longest retention tag on everything they 
keep.  The other users are still using PSTs for now, which would be migrated 
into Personal Archives if we continue to move that direction.  And we're 
talking terabytes in that alone.

The main issue here isn't the storage.  I could easily throw terabytes at the 
servers to accommodate.  The issue is backup and recovery.  I know, I know, 
we've been told that if we're running a DAG that tape backups are necessarily 
needed but tape backup is part of our DR strategy.  The problem is if you're 
going to back up your mailbox databases it has to go somewhere, whether on tape 
or disk-to-disk.  We could backup to the cloud but there is an expense to that 
as well.

And it's hard to impose quotas on mailboxes without the users pointing to 
Google mail and saying "They give me 15GB!!!  Why can't we have 15GB???"  The 
fact is that Google has the resources to backup and restore that kind of data.

Good luck!

Paul


From: listsad...@lists.myitforum.com<mailto:listsad...@lists.myitforum.com> 
[mailto:listsad...@lists.myitforum.com] On Behalf Of Carol Fee
Sent: Tuesday, April 18, 2017 12:08 PM
To: exchange@lists.myitforum.com<mailto:exchange@lists.myitforum.com>
Subject: [Exchange] Exchange User Mailbox Size Limits

I'm curious to know what/if any user mailbox size limits people are setting 
these days.  So  My questions are

Are you using Exchange on premise/Azure/Office 365 ? (We are Exchange on prem)

Do you use an archiving solution for your Exchange mailboxes ?  (We are using 
Barracuda Message Archiver)

If so, what is archived ? (We automatically archive nightly anything >50kb)

What have you set for size limits on your Exchange mailboxes ?

Thanks in advance.



Carol Fee
Network Administrator
617-338-0623
c...@massbar.org<mailto:c...@massbar.org>

[cid:image003.jpg@01D2B924.5C978200]
   Massachusetts Bar Association
   20 West Street
   Boston, MA 02111-1204
   (617) 338-0500

[Exchange] RE: Exchange User Mailbox Size Limits

[Rupprecht, James R.]

Exchange 2013/2016 on-premise for all students and staff at a large university 
here.

Our default user quota is 3Gb (2.9Gb warning / 3Gb no send / 4Gb no receive). 
Users may request additional storage in 2Gb increments up to 11Gb (10.9 / 11 / 
12). When they hit the 7Gb mark we setup an 50Gb Exchange online archive for 
them automatically. We require most users to setup Outlook in cached mode and 
encourage them to have all mailbox items cached (rather than just 12 months 
which is the default).

The drivers for our numbers are 1) Outlook performance with large OST files; 2) 
Many departments and individual users run systems that should have been 
decommissioned long ago; 3) Small SSDs in some devices are better used for 
things other than cached email; and 4) we got tired of working with people who 
have jumbo mailboxes and tried to pull everything to their tablet/mobile device.

We are planning on moving to O365 at the end of the year. Once there we will 
probably give everyone a large archive and set the default quota to something 
small (5Gb is the number I hear the most) and not even offer primary mailbox 
expansion requests.

For backups we use 'Exchange Native Protection Mode' which is essentially 'no 
backups, lots of copies'. We currently keep 4 copies of each mailbox in two 
different data centers, and our design would permit us to actually spread 
across four data centers with only IP address and HLB/GSLB changes. We lag the 
transaction logs 48 hours on one copy. I currently have 60,000 mailboxes and 
600T of disk in the environment.

/jim

-
James Rupprecht
IT Architect, Enterprise Systems
KU Information Technology
Skype/Email: jimruppre...@ku.edu




From: listsad...@lists.myitforum.com [mailto:listsad...@lists.myitforum.com] On 
Behalf Of Carol Fee
Sent: Tuesday, April 18, 2017 12:08 PM
To: exchange@lists.myitforum.com
Subject: [Exchange] Exchange User Mailbox Size Limits

I'm curious to know what/if any user mailbox size limits people are setting 
these days.  So  My questions are

Are you using Exchange on premise/Azure/Office 365 ? (We are Exchange on prem)

Do you use an archiving solution for your Exchange mailboxes ?  (We are using 
Barracuda Message Archiver)

If so, what is archived ? (We automatically archive nightly anything >50kb)

What have you set for size limits on your Exchange mailboxes ?

Thanks in advance.



Carol Fee
Network Administrator
617-338-0623
c...@massbar.org

[mbalogo-gold]
   Massachusetts Bar Association
   20 West Street
   Boston, MA 02111-1204
   (617) 338-0500

[Exchange] RE: Exchange User Mailbox Size Limits

[Heaton, Joseph@Wildlife]

We're in Office 365.  No archiving, as we have a 90-day retention policy, and a 
90-day legal hold on everyone.  We are using what Microsoft provides, so 100GB 
at the moment.

From: listsad...@lists.myitforum.com [mailto:listsad...@lists.myitforum.com] On 
Behalf Of Carol Fee
Sent: Tuesday, April 18, 2017 10:08 AM
To: exchange@lists.myitforum.com
Subject: [Exchange] Exchange User Mailbox Size Limits

I'm curious to know what/if any user mailbox size limits people are setting 
these days.  So  My questions are

Are you using Exchange on premise/Azure/Office 365 ? (We are Exchange on prem)

Do you use an archiving solution for your Exchange mailboxes ?  (We are using 
Barracuda Message Archiver)

If so, what is archived ? (We automatically archive nightly anything >50kb)

What have you set for size limits on your Exchange mailboxes ?

Thanks in advance.



Carol Fee
Network Administrator
617-338-0623
c...@massbar.org

[cid:image002.gif@01D2B82D.2CF330A0]
   Massachusetts Bar Association
   20 West Street
   Boston, MA 02111-1204
   (617) 338-0500

[Exchange] RE: Exchange User Mailbox Size Limits

[Oulman,James F]

(on-prem) - we give 25GB base and allow exceptions above that. Our largest 
mailbox is 110GB.
(exchange online) - base EXO quota.

From: listsad...@lists.myitforum.com [mailto:listsad...@lists.myitforum.com] On 
Behalf Of Carol Fee
Sent: Tuesday, April 18, 2017 1:08 PM
To: exchange@lists.myitforum.com
Subject: [Exchange] Exchange User Mailbox Size Limits

I'm curious to know what/if any user mailbox size limits people are setting 
these days.  So  My questions are

Are you using Exchange on premise/Azure/Office 365 ? (We are Exchange on prem)

Do you use an archiving solution for your Exchange mailboxes ?  (We are using 
Barracuda Message Archiver)

If so, what is archived ? (We automatically archive nightly anything >50kb)

What have you set for size limits on your Exchange mailboxes ?

Thanks in advance.



Carol Fee
Network Administrator
617-338-0623
c...@massbar.org

[cid:image002.gif@01D2B84C.2F889070]
   Massachusetts Bar Association
   20 West Street
   Boston, MA 02111-1204
   (617) 338-0500

[Exchange] RE: Exchange User Mailbox Size Limits

[Maglinger, Paul]

Ooo... a can of worms!

Our default for most users is PSAR at 160MB
Our "special" people get PSARs somewhere between 200MB and 500MB - the higher 
levels mostly to Marketing and Real Estate folks who can't get their vendors to 
use sftp for ridiculously large graphic and CAD files.  That being said, we 
have a 20MB limit on incoming mail.  We have one exec who is capped at 1.5GB 
and another at 2GB (20,000 and 28,000 items respectively).  The justification 
for increasing the mailbox limit is usually "if my mailbox fills up I'll miss 
important email".  So you increase it again, it fills up, increase, it fills, 
rinse, repeat, rinse...

We currently have a group of users using Exchange Personal Archives with 
Retention Policies and Tags.  These currently have no limits on them which is 
doing a great job of proving that the more space you give a user the more 
"stuff" they will put in there.  Case in point with the mailbox limits.  It 
also proves that users will put the longest retention tag on everything they 
keep.  The other users are still using PSTs for now, which would be migrated 
into Personal Archives if we continue to move that direction.  And we're 
talking terabytes in that alone.

The main issue here isn't the storage.  I could easily throw terabytes at the 
servers to accommodate.  The issue is backup and recovery.  I know, I know, 
we've been told that if we're running a DAG that tape backups are necessarily 
needed but tape backup is part of our DR strategy.  The problem is if you're 
going to back up your mailbox databases it has to go somewhere, whether on tape 
or disk-to-disk.  We could backup to the cloud but there is an expense to that 
as well.

And it's hard to impose quotas on mailboxes without the users pointing to 
Google mail and saying "They give me 15GB!!!  Why can't we have 15GB???"  The 
fact is that Google has the resources to backup and restore that kind of data.

Good luck!

Paul


From: listsad...@lists.myitforum.com [mailto:listsad...@lists.myitforum.com] On 
Behalf Of Carol Fee
Sent: Tuesday, April 18, 2017 12:08 PM
To: exchange@lists.myitforum.com
Subject: [Exchange] Exchange User Mailbox Size Limits

I'm curious to know what/if any user mailbox size limits people are setting 
these days.  So  My questions are

Are you using Exchange on premise/Azure/Office 365 ? (We are Exchange on prem)

Do you use an archiving solution for your Exchange mailboxes ?  (We are using 
Barracuda Message Archiver)

If so, what is archived ? (We automatically archive nightly anything >50kb)

What have you set for size limits on your Exchange mailboxes ?

Thanks in advance.



Carol Fee
Network Administrator
617-338-0623
c...@massbar.org

[cid:image002.gif@01D2B83F.203A2E60]
   Massachusetts Bar Association
   20 West Street
   Boston, MA 02111-1204
   (617) 338-0500