"Your Mailbox Is Over Its Size Limit"

The BBQ Pit
41

[QUOTE=CaveMike]
I’ve been meaning to ask this: If I send an email with a 1MB attachement to two people and we are all on the same server/site will Exchange save unique copies of the attachement or is it smart enough to consolidate them?
[/QUOTE]

Exchange 2003 uses single-item storage. So if I send out 50 copies of a document, the mail server has one copy. Still counts against your mailbox, as others have said.

[QUOTE=Ahunter3]
What if you make an inbox rule that auto-forwards all your work email to your regular ISP account? Then at least you’d have your freaking email.
[/quote]

It’s not your email. It’s the companies email. Sorry, we provide the servers, we provide the storage, we provide the computers you’re using to connect. It’s ours. So we can say we don’t want you to auto forward everything outside of the company. Don’t like it? Can’t help you.

Also, I don’t want that added traffic on my SMTP server. I process close to 200k messages a day through that connection, I don’t need to add more.

As for why I don’t want you to archive locally, well, I understand the need to, but I still have reservations with it. Basically, I don’t care if it’s on the server or not, but we back up the server, and we don’t back up your hard drive. Which is why we ask people to store all the documents on their home directory on the file server, and keep their email on the mail server. That way, if your machine dies, no big deal. All of your data is out on the servers, and we back those up nightly. I also mirror Exchange data off-site real time.

It also keeps us from getting these support calls: “I can’t see all my email from Outlook Web Access”. “My hard drive died, and I had a lot of personal folders”. “I put a password on my personal folder in Outlook, and I can’t remember it.”

Having said all of that, we’re fairly reasonable about our storage limits, I’ve got a pretty good amount of storage free right now.

42

[QUOTE=diku]
Exchange 2003 uses single-item storage. So if I send out 50 copies of a document, the mail server has one copy. Still counts against your mailbox, as others have said.
[/QUOTE]
Thanks diju. I assume that if the users are on different Exchange servers, then each server would store a copy. Likewise, if the email goes through a gateway then all bets are off.

In any case, this method basically automates the process of saving an attachment to a temp directory on a file server, mailing a link to the attachment, and then remembering to delete the temp file later on. The overhead of the mail storage and file storage are a bit different, but not much. Granted if the attachement is in a permanent location on a file server already, then it is better to email the link.

I guess it also means that if I am dilligent about keeping my mail box clean (which I am), I still may not be saving any real disk-space if at least one other person on the email isn’t. Of course, it is still better than saving 3 copies of the attachment.

It is nice to see single-storage implemented. It would be ideal if email servers took it to the next level and improved the attachement management by integrating with a versioned documentation store (like Docucrapum, sorry Documentum). It would be really cool if attachments could be identified and then organized on the documentation store, so that users don’t really have to think about quotas, disk-space, etc. For example, when a group is forwarding an Excel spreadsheet back and forth a million times, each with a minor edit, the mail system would grab the spreadsheet, stick it in the versioned file storage (which stores files by differences), and then provides a URL to the file.

43

[QUOTE=CaveMike]
I assume that if the users are on different Exchange servers, then each server would store a copy
[/QUOTE]

If the users are on the same Exchange server, Exchange still saves fifty separate copies. The sender’s mailbox retains only one copy (unless he sends out the same e-mail fifty separate times as opposed to fifty people all at once with the same e-mail), but Exchange will duplicate the attachment once for each recipient on the list, whether the recipient is on the same mail server or a different one.

44

[QUOTE=SkipMagic]
If the users are on the same Exchange server, Exchange still saves fifty separate copies. The sender’s mailbox retains only one copy (unless he sends out the same e-mail fifty separate times as opposed to fifty people all at once with the same e-mail), but Exchange will duplicate the attachment once for each recipient on the list, whether the recipient is on the same mail server or a different one.
[/QUOTE]
Not true. If they are on the same server (same message store) there is only one copy of the attachment and all the messages contain a pointer to that.

45

[QUOTE=mhendo]
I’m still surprised, though, that some people apparently have so little storage space that this causes them problems. There aren’t many things cheaper in the computer world nowdays than storage.
[/QUOTE]

You’d think so wouldn’t you but I have this problem often and I’m given the distinct impression that every time someone asks for more mail storage a techie dies or they have to pay for it out of their own pockets or something.

46

[QUOTE=yoyodyne]
Not true. If they are on the same server (same message store) there is only one copy of the attachment and all the messages contain a pointer to that.
[/QUOTE]

You’re right (my apologies, CaveMike). We have four separate message stores comprising our back-ends, and I was looking at two accounts, each from different stores, when I wrote that. A quick visit to Microsoft’s site would have been a better bet for me than to simply eye it.

47

[QUOTE=tagos]
You’d think so wouldn’t you but I have this problem often and I’m given the distinct impression that every time someone asks for more mail storage a techie dies or they have to pay for it out of their own pockets or something.
[/QUOTE]
The problem is users that treat the email system as a file server. It isn’t designed for that, and treating it that way causes problems the techie will then be blamed for.

48

[QUOTE=Rigamarole]
Why does your e-mail service suck so much? Even hotmail gives me 1000MB of storage space for free. I haven’t deleted any e-mails in years (except the junk ones, which admittedly I have to wade through a bit every day) and I’m only using 8% of my limit.
[/QUOTE]

You need that much storage space, with all the spam you get on hotmail.

49

[QUOTE=tagos]
You’d think so wouldn’t you but I have this problem often and I’m given the distinct impression that every time someone asks for more mail storage a techie dies or they have to pay for it out of their own pockets or something.
[/QUOTE]

Ok, let’s look at this. I need storage for my Exchange server to store more messages. First, I need to get the disk space. As stated above, I can’t use anything but a SCSI disk. Some SATA disks are getting there, but I’ll stick with SCSI, thanks. A 140 SCSI disk is going to cost me around $300. No big thing, right? Just add it. Assuming I have space in my SAN. I add it in, add it to the system, and then have to create a new storage group for that disk, and move your mailbox over, because of adding in new storage space.

If I don’t have space in my SAN, then we have a whole different situation. Then we’ve got to add on a SAN, then connect it, add it to the system. You can easily get in the $10k range. And typically when you buy a SAN, you max it out at that time, cause it’s harder to go back and buy additional disk space.

It can be a big cost increase. Typically it’s not, but sometimes it can be. It’s much easier if people don’t use Outlook as their main file organizer, which happens waaaaay too often.

50

[QUOTE=diku]
Exchange 2003 uses single-item storage. So if I send out 50 copies of a document, the mail server has one copy. Still counts against your mailbox, as others have said.

It’s not your email. It’s the companies email. Sorry, we provide the servers, we provide the storage, we provide the computers you’re using to connect. It’s ours. So we can say we don’t want you to auto forward everything outside of the company. Don’t like it? Can’t help you.

Also, I don’t want that added traffic on my SMTP server. I process close to 200k messages a day through that connection, I don’t need to add more.

As for why I don’t want you to archive locally, well, I understand the need to, but I still have reservations with it. Basically, I don’t care if it’s on the server or not, but we back up the server, and we don’t back up your hard drive. Which is why we ask people to store all the documents on their home directory on the file server, and keep their email on the mail server. That way, if your machine dies, no big deal. All of your data is out on the servers, and we back those up nightly. I also mirror Exchange data off-site real time.

It also keeps us from getting these support calls: “I can’t see all my email from Outlook Web Access”. “My hard drive died, and I had a lot of personal folders”. “I put a password on my personal folder in Outlook, and I can’t remember it.”

Having said all of that, we’re fairly reasonable about our storage limits, I’ve got a pretty good amount of storage free right now.
[/QUOTE]

Valid points, but everyone has missed something very important…can you say “Mail Loop?” Attachment size quotas, mailbox limits, and restrictions on auto-forwarding outside of an organization have many reasons (most already stated) and vary greatly by organization, but one of the primary reasons is to prevent mail from looping between two (or more) mailboxes.

Scenario: user Sally Smith takes a vacation for a week, so automatically forwards her work e-mail to her personal account (assume she doesn’t have remote access to work e-mail, but does to personal for whatever reason). Someone at work sends an e-mail with a large attachment to her work account, which then gets forwarded to the home account. However, the home account is over limit, so a non-delivery report (NDR) is sent to work. The Work account forwards the NDR to home, which generates another NDR back to work…ad infinitum. Eventually (if there are no limits in place) the server at work slows to a crawl and/or runs out of disk space handling all of the NDR traffic back and forth.

I completely understand that this is far less common now than it was a few years ago when most public e-mail services (yahoo, msn, aol) had very low mailbox size limits (around 5 MB), but it could, in fact, still happen. Many years ago as a novice Microsoft Exchange Administrator, I fell victim to just such a situation, and had no probhlem convincing management to let me put restrictions on mail to prevent it from recurring.

/Mike

51

[QUOTE=yoyodyne]

[Quote=AHunter3]

Why, for the luvvagod, would the IT Department not want folks to download and store their email locally? It frees up space on the IMAP mailserver and there’s an obvious legitimate business interest in retaining copies of workplace correspondence.
[/QUOTE]

It’s not weird, it’s extremely common. Local hard drives are seldom backed up, and as mentioned email is often required to be purged for legal reasons.
[/QUOTE]

I can’t speak for mail systems other than Exchange and Outlook, but local storage is also much less efficient than server storage. Single Instance Storage (SIS) by Exchange server has already been mentioned: only one copy of a message and attachment is held on a server, regardless of the number of recipients on that server the message is sent to. Assume 25 recipients for a 10 MB message, and that’s 25 individual copies if downloaded to local storage, as opposed to 1 on the server. And that 250 MB (25 recipients X 10 MB) actually is twice that, due to the way Outlook handles off-line storage: two copies of each message are stored in the off-line .pst file–one in plain text and one in rich text format.

.Pst files also have finite size limits: ~65,500 top-level items, plus a hard limit of 2 GBs in size (which means 1 GB of actual e-mail, due to the way storage is handled). I was able to find this slightly dated article on Microsoft’s web site, but I believe it still applies to current versions of Outlook: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/197752/en-us.

/Mike

52

[QUOTE=mikemo]

.Pst files also have finite size limits: ~65,500 top-level items, plus a hard limit of 2 GBs in size (which means 1 GB of actual e-mail, due to the way storage is handled). I was able to find this slightly dated article on Microsoft’s web site, but I believe it still applies to current versions of Outlook: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/197752/en-us.

/Mike
[/QUOTE]

Actually the current version of Outlook, Outlook 2003, allows for the creation of 25 GB pst’s. Not sure about the item limit.

Another thing that I forgot to mention is that the older pst files, prior to Outlook 2003, would corrupt if you looked at them funny. The scanpst tool from Microsoft would sometimes fix it, but you’d typically still lose email.

53

[QUOTE=diku]
Actually the current version of Outlook, Outlook 2003, allows for the creation of 25 GB pst’s. Not sure about the item limit.
[/QUOTE]

Fair enough. I haven’t managed Exchange (or Outlook) in a while.

[QUOTE=diku]
Another thing that I forgot to mention is that the older pst files, prior to Outlook 2003, would corrupt if you looked at them funny. The scanpst tool from Microsoft would sometimes fix it, but you’d typically still lose email.
[/QUOTE]

I had meant to mention that, but got distracted by work! :slight_smile: Every Exchange related mailing list and/or FAQ that I ever saw had somewhere in it (usually prominently placed!) PST=BAD!

54

That’s not so bad, I get nasty letters from my homeowners association informing me that my real mailbox is over its size limit. The HOA* po po* (seems like all the other dopers are using this term, so what the heck) is a desiccated old biddy who drives around the neighborhood writing up violations in her hellish infraction pad (whose leather cover is less tanned than the biddy’s hide). I’ve also gotten official reprimands for keeping my Christmas lights up a day past New Years, painting my mail box post the wrong shade of white and for letting the DirectTV people put my satellite dish on the roof, instead of on the ground where it wouldn’t be such an eyesore. I’d like to give her an official reprimand for cheating death too many years past her prime.

55

[QUOTE=mikemo]
I can’t speak for mail systems other than Exchange and Outlook, but local storage is also much less efficient than server storage. Single Instance Storage (SIS) by Exchange server has already been mentioned: only one copy of a message and attachment is held on a server, regardless of the number of recipients on that server the message is sent to. Assume 25 recipients for a 10 MB message, and that’s 25 individual copies if downloaded to local storage, as opposed to 1 on the server. And that 250 MB (25 recipients X 10 MB) actually is twice that, due to the way Outlook handles off-line storage: two copies of each message are stored in the off-line .pst file–one in plain text and one in rich text format.
[/QUOTE]
I have no doubt that you’re correct about all this.

What i find really bizarre, then, is the fact (reported by others in this thread) that even though there might be only 1 copy of an attachment on the server, each user is charged the full size of the attachment against his or her storage quota.

So, if i send a 5Mb attachment to to 19 people, this reduces the combined storage available to 20 people by a total of 100Mb, despite the fact that my attachment only takes up 5Mb on the server.

Seems like users lose on the swings and the roundabouts. They get limited storage and aren’t allowed to download items to their hard drives, and they also get docked for storage space that they’re not actually using.

56

I have no email address at work.

Nothing else to add, just wanted to gloat.

:smiley:

Tris

57

It’s all those “Increase your dick size” spams. There’s just a limit to how much swellage the mailbox can handle.

:smiley:

58

I’m sorry, but the intended recipient of your message, AHunter3, has no space available in his server inbox to receive your message, a state of affairs for which the blithering idiots running this show are at least partially to blame. If communicating with AHunter3 via email is of sufficient importance to you, please re-address your missive to ahunter3@personalISP.com.

cc: The Blithering Idiots Running This Show

59

[QUOTE=AHunter3]
I’m sorry, but the intended recipient of your message, AHunter3, has no space available in his server inbox to receive your message, a state of affairs for which the blithering idiots running this show are at least partially to blame. If communicating with AHunter3 via email is of sufficient importance to you, please re-address your missive to ahunter3@personalISP.com.

cc: The Blithering Idiots Running This Show
[/QUOTE]

Really? You think it’s the people providing the mailbox space’s fault you can’t manage your mailbox? That you can’t delete what you don’t need? Huh. Interesting.

And BTW, most companies don’t stop people from receiving, just sending.

60

[QUOTE=diku]
Really? You think it’s the people providing the mailbox space’s fault you can’t manage your mailbox? That you can’t delete what you don’t need? Huh. Interesting.

And BTW, most companies don’t stop people from receiving, just sending.
[/QUOTE]

If I can’t download the email to local copy on my own hard drive, I can’t delete it from the freaking server without losing it entirely. Therefore it stays. And whoever allocated me a fingernail-slivers’ worth of storage space is indeed partially to blame, as is the person who prevents me from making a local copy.

(Actually, I doubt they could prevent me from making a local copy, but they could annoy me enough to set up the describe auto-responder).

diku:

Yeah, yeah…look, I know a company can take this attitude. You work for us, we dictate the terms, we’re going to tell you what to wear, what to have on your computer, what programs to use, where to store your email, what to eat for lunch, what kind of car to drive, yadda yadda.

I can take an attitude too. I don’t have to work for you. I’m bringing in my own computer. I’m using Eudora, not freaking Outlook. My email’s getting stored locally, along with the rest of my email dating back to 1991, and decades after I leave the company it will still be in my possession. I don’t wear ties. You know what I’m going to do for you? I’m going to show up on time, I’m going to work with my characteristic fervid obsessiveness and with the pride I put into doing what is asked of me spectaculalry well and astonishingly fast, and I’m going to pitch in in any other useful capacity to help wherever I can be of help.

You know what you can do about me? You can fire me, for whatever perceived reason you find sufficient. It’s not a fate I’m going to deliberately seek out, but life is too short to be lived at less than to the fullest and that certainly goes for time spent at the job as much as any other time, so when you hire me you get the skillset and the eccentricities together.

And I’m going to use the computer my way.