Right. Remember, none of the numbers can be valid because there is no such thing as a physical mailbox. They are views, and as such, any size attributed to them is a theoretical number obtained by summing a bunch of stuff. Also, remember that notes and attachments associated with calendar objects (i.e. appointments) get counted. But I'll bet lots of stuff doesn't like holidays and such, but hey, that's a wild guess. Also, if you stop and think about it, the security attributes of any one object in Exchange have to be almost infinitely extensible, to allow for all of the changing view activity. I suspect that those attributes are constantly causing objects to change size, but that those sizes don't get updated very often within a view.
If you stop and think about it, if there are three people on the same store, and A, sends B a note, and then B forwards it to C, it should get a few bytes larger in A's view assuming that it is still in Sent Items. But I'll bet that step is skipped, or massively deferred, which is going to make the size data wrong for most items in most views most of the time. People can have lots of stuff linked that way. I've never seen the exact formula for what gets added and what doesn't, but I'll bet Sue knows, if you send her a note at Slipstick. If she doesn't know, then no-one does. -----Original Message----- From: Blunt, James H (Jim) [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, November 21, 2002 8:44 AM To: Exchange Discussions Subject: RE: Size of mailbox Jim, Regardless of the "the trend I see for all other users", I would have a problem believing either set of numbers. Here's why: The first set of numbers (if that is actually kilobytes and not bytes) would indicate that there SHOULD be a total of ~336mb in the first mailbox. Obviously, there isn't...according to your report. The second set of numbers would indicate that there should be a total of ~813mb in the second mailbox. Again, the numbers still don't add up. The only way I can think of that your second set of numbers would be accurate, is that you have some 3rd party piece of software that actually saves all attachments off to a member server and then stores a pointer with the message to the actual location of the attachment, which is screwing up your reports. But look at your second set of numbers. The TOTAL for the entire mailbox is still smaller than just the messages by themselves, without even adding in the attachment numbers. I think I'd go back to square one or go back and look at the configuration of your reporting software, in order to make sure you don't have it grabbing data for the mailbox reports that doesn't belong to the mailbox. -----Original Message----- From: James Liddil [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, November 21, 2002 7:35 AM To: Exchange Discussions Subject: RE: Size of mailbox That helps but I still have some questions. I'll try to be more clear. When I look in the Exchange System Manager at an account does or does that not give one at least a relatively true size for that persons mailstore size? Bindview tells me they simply use the numbers provided by Exchange to get the report figures. This report gave me a mailstore number size equivalent to that I saw in the System Manager. (~3.4 meg this morning). All my confusion stems from the following. I run a report in Bindview and the query terms have the following definition: -Message Size: This field contains the size (in k) of the Message, including attachments -Attachment Total Size: This field lists the total size of all attachments (bytes) to the message -Total Mailbox Size: This field contains the total size of all messages (k). So I get: Message Size: 268356 k Attachment Total Size: 75998 k Total Mailbox size: 3341 k (this number matches what I see in System Manager) For another person I get Message Size: 429069 Attachment Total Size: 403223 k Total Mailbox size: 425915 k What are some reasons for mine having such a difference between message size and total mailbox size? The data for the second person matches the trend I see for all other users. What is the most reliable number? And which number does exchange use to determine what a person mailbox size is and whether they are near or over limit? And why am I asking all this? Our message store total is close to 6 gigs for a company of 20 people. So then I decide to use Bindview to get a better breakdown of the store. And it appears that as with many orgs we have a lot of pack rats with 80% (based on the bindview numbers) of their mailbox space consisting of attachments. I want to make sure that these at least some what reflect the real world numbers. Are there better tools to get a handle on the store? Jim Liddil > -----Original Message----- > From: Dupler, Craig [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Sent: Wednesday, November 20, 2002 5:36 PM > To: Exchange Discussions > Subject: RE: Size of mailbox > > > Keep in mind that there is no such thing as a mailbox. So, > in a very real sense, it consumes little if any space. Ok, > what is it. > > The store or more accurately the two stores are two large > combined storage environments. One is used to manage > inherently private stuff (mailboxes) and the other is used to > manage largely public stuff (public folders). Thus the priv > and pub. You will often hear them referred to as "single > instance stores or storage." There are several important > ways to think about what is in them. > > Everything is only in there once. If there are two copies of > something, then the second copy is either not in one of the > stores, or there are multiple servers and something has been > replicated due to the requirements implied by the rights > (more on this below). > > A mailbox is a view of the contents of the two stores. A > mailbox view includes the entire hierarchy of the pub store > and only those items in the priv store that are assigned to > the security context and "mailbox" that matches the user's > current profile. One item mail may appear in every last view > of every last valid profile, or it may occur in only one. > That will depend on to whom it was sent, and how it was > dispositioned in a particular view. If someone deletes and > item, all that does is remove it from their view. It is not > actually purged until it is deleted from all currently valid > security contexts that have been linked into that store. > > As you can imagine, a fair number of cycles in the server are > spent on internal processes that maintain the integrity of > the store. There are sweeping and garbage collection activities. > > Obviously, the storage allocated to a mailbox view is at best > and on a good day, only a theoretical value. It looks at the > stored objects (including calendar items and journal entries) > that can be seen in in that view, and sums them. Obviously, > the sum of all views is many times greater than the total > physical size of the two stores on the typical server. But > it is a convenient way of looking at the contents, and > encouraging someone to delete stuff that they don't really > need. But equally obvious, if I send two people on the same > server as me a message and both of them delete it, but I keep > a copy in my "Sent Items" folder, nothing has been deleted > and the stores do not change size. All that changed was the > contents of the two recipient's views. > > Does that help? > > -----Original Message----- > From: James Liddil [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Sent: Wednesday, November 20, 2002 2:04 PM > To: Exchange Discussions > Subject: Size of mailbox > > > If look at my the storage size for my mail box it shows about > 1,000,000 Bytes (~1000 KB.)Now just off hand this does not > look right. I then run report with Bindview for Exchange for > the attachment total and come up with ~74,000 KB which is > larger than my total storage size. If I look in Outlook I > see 240,000 KB for my folder size. Can someone help me make > sense of this? > > Jim Liddil > > _________________________________________________________________ > List posting FAQ: http://www.swinc.com/resource/exch_faq.htm > Archives: http://www.swynk.com/sitesearch/search.asp > To unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Exchange List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > _________________________________________________________________ > List posting FAQ: http://www.swinc.com/resource/exch_faq.htm > Archives: http://www.swynk.com/sitesearch/search.asp > To unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Exchange List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > _________________________________________________________________ List posting FAQ: http://www.swinc.com/resource/exch_faq.htm Archives: http://www.swynk.com/sitesearch/search.asp To unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Exchange List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _________________________________________________________________ List posting FAQ: http://www.swinc.com/resource/exch_faq.htm Archives: http://www.swynk.com/sitesearch/search.asp To unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Exchange List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _________________________________________________________________ List posting FAQ: http://www.swinc.com/resource/exch_faq.htm Archives: http://www.swynk.com/sitesearch/search.asp To unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Exchange List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
