PST Backup

gunbunnysoulja

Hello,

I am searching for the best method to backup .PST files to a NAS. The .PST will be used local and the NAS backup will be for protection.

We currently utilize a NETAPP NAS backup with folder redirection of my documents to NAS and offline files enabled with sync schedule. We don't want to use .PST for this however due to many issues of using .PST live off NAS, including VPN use.

The software needs to allow the backup to be done while in use, as well as on a schedule and incremental.

I have considered Datamills PST2PST however another DoD agency that utilized it had too many problems so I would like to avoid them.

I am currently looking at AddOnMail PSTStation Corporate but I don't know too much about the company.

I have also considered a COMMVAULT backup for the .PST.

Any ideas or thoughts?

Everyone

Are you on Exchange 2010 yet? If so, or if you can migrate to it, use the Personal Archive feature...

Limits to using personal folders (.pst) files over LAN and WAN links

Really you're trying to find a technical solution to a policy problem. If you're going to allow PST files, it should be with the stipulation that the user is responsible for them. Also they should be blocked from being written to any network shares.

Allowing PST files at all can create nightmares for e-Discovery if you ever have to do it.

gunbunnysoulja

Thanks for the reply. The users need to use .PST files as they are currently limited to a 100MB inbox. This will increase soon however many users will still need .PST for archiving. This is for a DoD environment.

We are unable to migrate to Exchange 2010 unfortunately.

We want the backups to be automated as we know if the user is responsible for them, they will not get backed up.

demonfurbie

how many users?

are they using laptops or desktops?

what os are they using?

Everyone

No they don't need to use it. They don't need to keep e-mail for 20 years.

When I was working in a DoD Environment with the same limitations, we had retention policies. You had your 100 MB limit (or less depending on rank actually), and you weren't supposed to keep more than 90 days worth of e-mail. If your job required you to receive a volume of e-mail that would cause you to exceed the 100 MB limit within 90 days, then you could ask for an increase which required approval. PST files were use at your own risk. Not allowed on the SAN, and not backed up for you.

It's SO much easier in an DoD environment, you have policies to back you up, and can have Commanders sign off on new ones if needed.


The company I work for now (not associated with the DoD at all) still has 100 MB mailbox limits. No retention policy, but PST files are still use at your own risk.

XeeN

We had a pst "situation" at my company for a while where we had to backup some PSTs (mostly for merger and acquisition onboarding and transitions).

We used Vembu Storegrid. Online Backup | Remote Backup | Offsite Backup

gunbunnysoulja

Everyone wrote: »

No they don't need to use it. They don't need to keep e-mail for 20 years.

When I was working in a DoD Environment with the same limitations, we had retention policies. You had your 100 MB limit (or less depending on rank actually), and you weren't supposed to keep more than 90 days worth of e-mail. If your job required you to receive a volume of e-mail that would cause you to exceed the 100 MB limit within 90 days, then you could ask for an increase which required approval. PST files were use at your own risk. Not allowed on the SAN, and not backed up for you.

It's SO much easier in an DoD environment, you have policies to back you up, and can have Commanders sign off on new ones if needed.


The company I work for now (not associated with the DoD at all) still has 100 MB mailbox limits. No retention policy, but PST files are still use at your own risk.

Why would you assume they don't need it? Yes, they do need to keep it. We aren't talking about soldiers. We are talking about scientists, engineers, etc. at a research and development facility, and everything goes back 7 years. We do have some that have approval for >100MB on Exchange, however with Enterprise E-Mail right around the corner (DISA managed) that's a moot point anyways. We have 2,000 users and many have >10GB e-mail via .PST.

100MB works for many. I did a comparasion analysis of several different DoD entities in which that worked fine for them when researching the best approach for a backup solution (went with NETAPP) however for us it just isn't feasible.

This is why I'm looking for those who can provide input on a solution for .PST files that is incremental, scheduled, and can be backed up while in use.

gunbunnysoulja

demonfurbie wrote: »

how many users?

are they using laptops or desktops?

what os are they using?

2,000 users. Using laptops as desktop replacements. Windows Vista Enterprise.

swild

Microsoft actually has a PST backup program. It's what we use at my company.

Using the Microsoft Outlook Personal Folders Backup tool - Outlook - Office.com

demonfurbie

have ya thought about mapping a network drive and redirecting the pst files to that network drive with each user having there pst either named there user name or a folder for each user.

Everyone

gunbunnysoulja wrote: »

Why would you assume they don't need it? Yes, they do need to keep it. We aren't talking about soldiers. We are talking about scientists, engineers, etc. at a research and development facility, and everything goes back 7 years. We do have some that have approval for >100MB on Exchange, however with Enterprise E-Mail right around the corner (DISA managed) that's a moot point anyways. We have 2,000 users and many have >10GB e-mail via .PST.

100MB works for many. I did a comparasion analysis of several different DoD entities in which that worked fine for them when researching the best approach for a backup solution (went with NETAPP) however for us it just isn't feasible.

This is why I'm looking for those who can provide input on a solution for .PST files that is incremental, scheduled, and can be backed up while in use.

Because e-mail has been my life for a very long time. They don't need it. E-mail is not a storage system. How often do any of them need to go back through 10+GB PST files and find an e-mail that is several years old? I guarantee you it is almost never. If there are legal (or other) requirements to keep information a certain number of years, keeping it in PST files is not the answer.

PST files and e-mail hoarders are huge pet peeve of mine.

An archiving system that puts data over a certain age onto tape in that rare off chance someone really has a legitimate need to pull up that memo that was e-mailed to them back in 2004 or whatever makes a lot more sense than backing up all of it up to a NAS or SAN.

What kind of storage are the Exchange databases on? I find it really amusing when people want to take e-mail out of Exchange databases, put it in PST files, then put those files on the same storage system the Exchange databases are on. What kind of sense does that make? If you aren't saving any space, or using a cheaper storage medium, what is the point?

If it's a moot point due to Enterprise E-mail coming up, then why waste the effort on this? You probably won't be able to keep anything you put into place once all your users are mandated to use that.

gunbunnysoulja

swild wrote: »

Microsoft actually has a PST backup program. It's what we use at my company.

Using the Microsoft Outlook Personal Folders Backup tool - Outlook - Office.com

That was one of the initial programs that I used however it had a few red flags such as not being incremental. All it appears to do is delete the old backup and copy over to the new path again. So if the backup fails, there is no old backup as it was previously deleted. Since it's not incremental every workstation would need to copy all .pst's from scratch. A better incremental free plugin appears to be PST tools BackupMyFolder: PSTTools - BackupMyFolder!

or SafePSTBackup: Safe PST Backup - Free Software to back up Outlook PST files


I would use either except I want something centrally managed.

Claymoore

demonfurbie wrote: »

have ya thought about mapping a network drive and redirecting the pst files to that network drive with each user having there pst either named there user name or a folder for each user.

Obligatory Post - PSTs are not and never have been supported on File Servers:
Network Stored PST files ... don't do it! - Ask the Performance Team - Site Home - TechNet Blogs

gunbunnysoulja

Everyone wrote: »

Because e-mail has been my life for a very long time. They don't need it. E-mail is not a storage system. How often do any of them need to go back through 10+GB PST files and find an e-mail that is several years old? I guarantee you it is almost never. If there are legal (or other) requirements to keep information a certain number of years, keeping it in PST files is not the answer.

PST files and e-mail hoarders are huge pet peeve of mine.

An archiving system that puts data over a certain age onto tape in that rare off chance someone really has a legitimate need to pull up that memo that was e-mailed to them back in 2004 or whatever makes a lot more sense than backing up all of it up to a NAS or SAN.

What kind of storage are the Exchange databases on? I find it really amusing when people want to take e-mail out of Exchange databases, put it in PST files, then put those files on the same storage system the Exchange databases are on. What kind of sense does that make? If you aren't saving any space, or using a cheaper storage medium, what is the point?

If it's a moot point due to Enterprise E-mail coming up, then why waste the effort on this? You probably won't be able to keep anything you put into place once all your users are mandated to use that.

In regards to E.E., the moot point is requesting an increase of the Exchange limits. Everyone will have access to 4GB of DISA's cloud for inbox however people will unfortunately need >4GB. You make a great point about e-mail not being a storage system. I agree and the unfortunate culture this environment has had for the past couple decades has taught them to save all e-mails.

The Exchange System is separate from our NETAPP NAS which we use for backup of everything else (shares and home directory).

Politics play a large role in doing things this way for DoD as there is baseline provided funds, and mission funds. 100MB is baseline. Everything else the mission tenants need/want comes out of Mission funds which means a separate system. You make a good point however with archiving. We couldn't do that now as the users @ 100MB need access to much more than that daily, however with 4GB anything greater can probably be archived. We do have COMMVAULT and I did consider that for block level backups but maybe we can integrate that into an archiving solution. I'll check with the tape guys as well as that's not my lane but what do you recommend for an archiving solution to tape?

Anyone here use Symantec Enterprise Vault?

gunbunnysoulja

Claymoore wrote: »

Obligatory Post - PSTs are not and never have been supported on File Servers:
Network Stored PST files ... don't do it! - Ask the Performance Team - Site Home - TechNet Blogs

Exactly. We have folder redirection with offline files for everything else, but can't do it for .PST's.

Everyone

gunbunnysoulja wrote: »

In regards to E.E., the moot point is requesting an increase of the Exchange limits. Everyone will have access to 4GB of DISA's cloud for inbox however people will unfortunately need >4GB. You make a great point about e-mail not being a storage system. I agree and the unfortunate culture this environment has had for the past couple decades has taught them to save all e-mails.

The Exchange System is separate from our NETAPP NAS which we use for backup of everything else (shares and home directory).

Politics play a large role in doing things this way for DoD as there is baseline provided funds, and mission funds. 100MB is baseline. Everything else the mission tenants need/want comes out of Mission funds which means a separate system. You make a good point however with archiving. We couldn't do that now as the users @ 100MB need access to much more than that daily, however with 4GB anything greater can probably be archived. We do have COMMVAULT and I did consider that for block level backups but maybe we can integrate that into an archiving solution. I'll check with the tape guys as well as that's not my lane but what do you recommend for an archiving solution to tape?

Commvault has an OK Archiving solution (I've used it), it requires an add-on for Outlook to be installed client side though. You may have tough time getting that authorized. You could probably do it now if the right people signed off on it. What you can do is setup the Archive to keep XX days (or years) worth of data on the NAS, then anything older than that off to tape. Basically you only want to keep frequently accessed data on disk (high cost storage), less frequently (i.e. usually older) data should be put on tape (low-cost storage). Tape retrieval can be slow, especially if you move the tapes that mailboxes are archived off onto off site. That would keep reasonably quick access to e-mails that are archived due to space limitations. It is pretty transparent to the user too, a stub is kept in their mailbox, and the add-in retrieves the message through the Commvault server when a user tries to open it. With the data on disk, it is only slightly slower than opening a live message from the Exchange server. With it on tape it can be painful waiting for retrieval.

That will work for you NOW while you still have your Exchange servers. That type of solution will no longer work for you once you go to Enterprise e-mail and the Exchange servers are all up at DISA.

You can't do incremental/differential backups of PST files. Anytime anything is added or removed from the PST file, it will have changed, so an incremental or differential backup of the file system the PST file is on will copy the whole file every time regardless. Backup software doesn't look inside the PST file and only copy new information. The only PST files that would not get picked up in an incremental backup would be files those that didn't get touched at all.

Claymoore

Everyone wrote: »

Because e-mail has been my life for a very long time. They don't need it. E-mail is not a storage system. How often do any of them need to go back through 10+GB PST files and find an e-mail that is several years old? I guarantee you it is almost never. If there are legal (or other) requirements to keep information a certain number of years, keeping it in PST files is not the answer.

PST files and e-mail hoarders are huge pet peeve of mine.

I somewhat agree. PST files are a data loss or data leak disaster waiting to happen and should be disabled through group policy. However, I honestly don't care if someone wants to keep all their email. The technology exists to give them large mailboxes and archives on cheap storage, so give them the space and save your bullets for another IT battle.

100 Mb limits are simply retarted today. As an Exchange admin, I was never subject to those rules before (who watches the watchers?) until I became a consultant and thus an end user of computing resources. We were subject to 100 Mb limits and almost all of us were always hitting warning thresholds or actual send and receive limits on a weekly basis. I had auto-archive rules tuned to different times for different folders to send to multiple PSTs at one point, but I eventually gave up and had a 30-day default rule that moved to an archive PST. I then backed up my laptop to a portable hard drive in preparation for the eventual laptop failure, re-image, or replacement.

We had lots of incidents of mail being rejected to our account execs because their mailboxes were full. It's amazing how much space calendar items take up, and any decent account exec has their calendar constantly booked. Then you start calculating space for attachments and a mailbox fills up quickly. Thousands of man-hours were wasted by people managing thier mailboxes rather than working. When those are $200 per hour consultants and AEs working on million dollar deals, you can justify buying terabytes of email storage in a hurry.

gunbunnysoulja

Everyone wrote: »

You can't do incremental/differential backups of PST files. Anytime anything is added or removed from the PST file, it will have changed, so an incremental or differential backup of the file system the PST file is on will copy the whole file every time regardless. Backup software doesn't look inside the PST file and only copy new information. The only PST files that would not get picked up in an incremental backup would be files those that didn't get touched at all.

I originally thought this as well due to the inherent architecture of the .PST, however there are several programs out there that do incremental backup's of .PST's. I'm assuming it's a proprietary algorithm.

Everyone wrote: »

That will work for you NOW while you still have your Exchange servers. That type of solution will no longer work for you once you go to Enterprise e-mail and the Exchange servers are all up at DISA.

Can you suggest a viable solution after we no longer manage our own Exchange servers?

gunbunnysoulja

Claymoore wrote: »

We had lots of incidents of mail being rejected to our account execs because their mailboxes were full. It's amazing how much space calendar items take up, and any decent account exec has their calendar constantly booked. Then you start calculating space for attachments and a mailbox fills up quickly. Thousands of man-hours were wasted by people managing thier mailboxes rather than working. When those are $200 per hour consultants and AEs working on million dollar deals, you can justify buying terabytes of email storage in a hurry.

And this unfortunately happens to us all the time. Blackberry's being thrown into the mix only causes more frustration.

Everyone

Claymoore wrote: »

I somewhat agree. PST files are a data loss or data leak disaster waiting to happen and should be disabled through group policy. However, I honestly don't care if someone wants to keep all their email. The technology exists to give them large mailboxes and archives on cheap storage, so give them the space and save your bullets for another IT battle.

100 Mb limits are simply retarted today. As an Exchange admin, I was never subject to those rules before (who watches the watchers?) until I became a consultant and thus an end user of computing resources. We were subject to 100 Mb limits and almost all of us were always hitting warning thresholds or actual send and receive limits on a weekly basis. I had auto-archive rules tuned to different times for different folders to send to multiple PSTs at one point, but I eventually gave up and had a 30-day default rule that moved to an archive PST. I then backed up my laptop to a portable hard drive in preparation for the eventual laptop failure, re-image, or replacement.

We had lots of incidents of mail being rejected to our account execs because their mailboxes were full. It's amazing how much space calendar items take up, and any decent account exec has their calendar constantly booked. Then you start calculating space for attachments and a mailbox fills up quickly. Thousands of man-hours were wasted by people managing thier mailboxes rather than working. When those are $200 per hour consultants and AEs working on million dollar deals, you can justify buying terabytes of email storage in a hurry.

Yes and when people can get 7+GB from GMail or pick your favorite free e-mail service, it is hard to keep a 100MB limit. The number of users you have in the environment plays a huge part in cost effectiveness of just giving people larger mailboxes. There's a lot more to it than ## mailbox limit X ##### users.

With the 60,000+ mailboxes I have in the environment I work in now, it was going to cost almost $500k to get the storage necessary to support an increase from 100 MB mailboxes to 500 MB mailboxes as part of a migration to Exchange 2010. With that many mailboxes, only about 300 have exceptions to exceed the current 100 MB limit, so only a fraction of a percent. Enterprise class SAN storage, replicated across geographically dispersed data centers, isn't cheap.

For comparison, my last job with just under 4,000 mailboxes, I was able to increase their mailbox limits from 200 MB to a 3 tiered approach, 500 MB, 1.5 GB, and 3 GB, without using more storage than what was already assigned to Exchange, so no additional costs.

In gunbunny's case here, there are policies keeping them at 100 MB right now, and even if the policy could be changed, investing in more storage to support a limit increase would not be an option due to pending migration of e-mail services to DISA's "cloud". Speaking of, the storage system for that must have cost a TON. IIRC close to half a million users, and they're all getting like a 4GB limit.

Claymoore

Everyone wrote: »

...It is pretty transparent to the user too, a stub is kept in their mailbox, and the add-in retrieves the message through the Commvault server when a user tries to open it...

Beware of archive solutions that 'stub' messages. This may address size problems, but won't do anything about Exchange performance. Exchange database performance is based on the number of items - not their size. Stubbing won't help with Exchange DB performance, if that is a secondary concern. You are also adding complexity with two different systems needing to work together just to retrieve one message.

I have used other archive solutions - Mimosa, Enterprise Vault - but I prefer the native Exchange archiving in 2010. Rather than license, manage, and buy storage for another product, you can load up a physical server with a bunch of SATA disks and create all the archive space you need.

Everyone

gunbunnysoulja wrote: »

I originally thought this as well due to the inherent architecture of the .PST, however there are several programs out there that do incremental backup's of .PST's. I'm assuming it's a proprietary algorithm.

Has to be a client side app then. Does the Army do (this is an Army site right?) the "Standard Desktop" too? If so, good luck getting approval to install a 3rd party app on the client for this.

gunbunnysoulja wrote: »

Can you suggest a viable solution after we no longer manage our own Exchange servers?

Not for e-mail Archiving... all the ones I've seen or worked with require an agent on the Exchange server to backup/archive the data, and a plug-in on the client side for retrieval.

Once DISA sucks up all your mailboxes to their Exchange servers, they'll be the ones doing the backup. I haven't kept up on that project, since I decided not to take a contract working it. Maybe DISA will have an archiving solution available? I do know they are using Exchange 2010 for this, so maybe they'll make use of the built in archiving features of it.

gunbunnysoulja

Everyone wrote: »

Speaking of, the storage system for that must have cost a TON. IIRC close to half a million users, and they're all getting like a 4GB limit.

I'm sure the cost was quite insane.... The Army claims the move to DISA will save 100 million this year alone... I do not necessarily believe that. I do think it's the right direction though considering the inefficencies of each organization doing things differently. I know operating costs on each installation is pretty hefty.

gunbunnysoulja

Everyone wrote: »

Has to be a client side app then. Does the Army do (this is an Army site right?) the "Standard Desktop" too? If so, good luck getting approval to install a 3rd party app on the client for this.

This is an Army site. We aren't using software for the incremental capabilities, however if we utilize a PST backup program, we will move in that direction. We can get a certificate of networthyness for pretty much anything if we can justify a need for it (and there aren't any vulnerabilities). Being outside of the normal DoD scope, we purchase some pretty obscure software for the engineers and scientists. The downside is a CON request takes some time.

Claymoore

Everyone wrote: »

Yes and when people can get 7+GB from GMail or pick your favorite free e-mail service, it is hard to keep a 100MB limit. The number of users you have in the environment plays a huge part in cost effectiveness of just giving people larger mailboxes. There's a lot more to it than ## mailbox limit X ##### users.

With the 60,000+ mailboxes I have in the environment I work in now, it was going to cost almost $500k to get the storage necessary to support an increase from 100 MB mailboxes to 500 MB mailboxes as part of a migration to Exchange 2010. With that many mailboxes, only about 300 have exceptions to exceed the current 100 MB limit, so only a fraction of a percent. Enterprise class SAN storage, replicated across geographically dispersed data centers, isn't cheap.

For comparison, my last job with just under 4,000 mailboxes, I was able to increase their mailbox limits from 200 MB to a 3 tiered approach, 500 MB, 1.5 GB, and 3 GB, without using more storage than what was already assigned to Exchange, so no additional costs.

In gunbunny's case here, there are policies keeping them at 100 MB right now, and even if the policy could be changed, investing in more storage to support a limit increase would not be an option due to pending migration of e-mail services to DISA's "cloud". Speaking of, the storage system for that must have cost a TON. IIRC close to half a million users, and they're all getting like a 4GB limit.

Well, there's your problem - you are putting Exchange on the SAN, which is the most expensive place you can keep it. Exchange 2010 is designed to run on local disks. SAS isn't necessary in most cases, SATA is fine. Even a JBOD configuration is acceptable if you have more than one DAG member in a site. Microsoft's internal mail servers and their cloud run on local disks which saved them a ton of money in storage costs when they moved to 2010.

As Everyone knows (which if everyone does know, why am I pointing it out?), the Exchange Mailbox Role Requirements calculator is your friend when you want to properly size your mailbox servers. It has some quirks, and you need to understand why it makes some of the recommendations it does, but it is an invaluable tool. I used to just use for proper storage sizing, but often I am using the results to justify putting Excnage on a physical box to leverage local storage instead of virtualizing the mailbox server and storing everything on the SAN.

Everyone

gunbunnysoulja wrote: »

This is an Army site. We aren't using software for the incremental capabilities, however if we utilize a PST backup program, we will move in that direction. We can get a certificate of networthyness for pretty much anything if we can justify a need for it (and there aren't any vulnerabilities). Being outside of the normal DoD scope, we purchase some pretty obscure software for the engineers and scientists. The downside is a CON request takes some time.

Assuming they don't block PST usage post migration, you'll have to rely on the users to create the PST files themselves (sounds like they already are anyway). If it's already up to them to create a PST file, why make the effort to back it up for them?

I'm still a big fan of "You have 4GB (or whatever they give you after moving to DISA) of space now, clean out your freaking mailbox or STFU." + "If you want to have a PST file, have fun, but we aren't supporting it."

Another thing to think about... Unless they are configuring Outlook to deliver their mail straight to a PST file, the mail should already be backed up on the Exchange server. Do you perform mailbox level backups on the Exchange server? If so, how frequently? If mail sits on the Exchange server long enough to get picked up by its regular backups, then is moved to a PST file, and then you backup the PST file... see where I'm going here? Why back things up twice? If something is really important, you should be able to restore it directly to a mailbox.

Unless you find some PST backup software that does item level backups (I've never even wanted to search for this type of software so no idea of it exists), you'll still be facing data loss when recovering a PST file.

A conventional backup of a PST file would copy the entire file to the backup media. If I add messages to my PST file every day, and I accidentally delete an important message, then ask you to recover it for me, you go and restore the important message, I could now be missing that message AND many others, because the only thing you can do is restore the entire PST file from the last backup.

Now if this were a mailbox backup, you'd be able to drill down to the item level, and restore just that single missing message for me, or worst case, just tell me the message wasn't available for restoration.

gunbunnysoulja

Everyone wrote: »

Assuming they don't block PST usage post migration, you'll have to rely on the users to create the PST files themselves (sounds like they already are anyway). If it's already up to them to create a PST file, why make the effort to back it up for them?

I'm still a big fan of "You have 4GB (or whatever they give you after moving to DISA) of space now, clean out your freaking mailbox or STFU." + "If you want to have a PST file, have fun, but we aren't supporting it."

They won't be blocking .PST creation although I would quickly consider it via GPO if I can find a viable solution for archival. I would LOVE to tell them 4GB is sufficient but a GS15, SES, or Colonel doesn't want to hear that. They say "the culture of the base has become accustomed to stock piling their e-mail and how much money would be spent for them to frequently clean it out?". So unfortunately if the higher up's accept this culture, there is really nothing I can do.

Everyone

Claymoore wrote: »

Well, there's your problem - you are putting Exchange on the SAN, which is the most expensive place you can keep it. Exchange 2010 is designed to run on local disks. SAS isn't necessary in most cases, SATA is fine. Even a JBOD configuration is acceptable if you have more than one DAG member in a site. Microsoft's internal mail servers and their cloud run on local disks which saved them a ton of money in storage costs when they moved to 2010.

As Everyone knows (which if everyone does know, why am I pointing it out?), the Exchange Mailbox Role Requirements calculator is your friend when you want to properly size your mailbox servers. It has some quirks, and you need to understand why it makes some of the recommendations it does, but it is an invaluable tool. I used to just use for proper storage sizing, but often I am using the results to justify putting Excnage on a physical box to leverage local storage instead of virtualizing the mailbox server and storing everything on the SAN.

SAN isn't always the most expensive. Like I said, there's a lot more too it. In large environments, where datacenter space can be at a premium, and energy/cooling costs are important, a SAN can be much more economical than a bunch of servers with local storage.

I don't have it right in front of me, but I want to say the storage requirements were going to be something like 194 TB. That is for databases, transaction logs, and using lagged copies. Cramming 10K mailboxes per server, there's only going to be 6 mailbox servers in 2 DAGs IIRC. They're all going to be blades. Most of the other roles (CAS and HT) are going to be VMs. Would you really want 194 TB of local storage spread across only 6 servers? That's roughly 32TB per server, so you'd probably be looking at 4U servers just to have enough slots for all the drives each server would need. That's over half a rack just for mailbox servers.

I'd use local storage and JBOD for an SMB deployment any day, but it isn't even a consideration for large enterprises with demanding HA requirements.

Chivalry1

Since this is a issue I have dealt with in the past; here is my .2 cents. I had this same issue where I had to locate a product and backup desktop PST files. Well the files never successfully backed up, mostly ever day I got a 30% success rate. The product often had problems backing up the PST file because it was locked by end user Outlook. User would not log off there machine as instructed by IT. The PST files was corrupted due to size and pulling over the network. The backup agent would cause a major bandwidth problem due to its size. The product was expensive and often did not work.

There are literally thousands of reason not to use PST files. Not to sound redundant but you are better off increasing the storage limitation for targeted users.

Mainly you are spending money for a temporary technology which the Board of Directors will likely frown upon. Identify the targeted users, determine there potential expectation of storage requirements. Then purchase more SAN or NAS storage for your exchange infrastructure. Of course charge this back to the line of business that "NEEDS" this required space.

One thing I have learned in IT don't let none technical people paint you into a corner with questionable technology.

gunbunnysoulja

Since most of my focus now is factoring in Post Migration when our Exchange goes to the cloud, we will then have no capability of increasing the size. The good news is users will have 4GB but still I'm being told that is not sufficient for approximately 10% of the workforce. I am trying to determine what percentage of that can be archived to tape. The culture is if they have the space, they will fill it up. So 4GB is good for only so long.

Is there a good archival system that doesn't require direct access to exchange since we won't be managing it and since the concensus seems to be against the .PST? We just spent 150k for 24TB of NAS space (10GB per user) so I don't want to break the bank with whatever solution we will utilize for e-mail.

Thanks again for all the help!

gunbunnysoulja

Has anyone here used 4Team Corporation's Safe PST Backup (Free or Enterprise) in a multi-user environment to NAS? So far it's my top choice for standalone incremental .PST backup which works when Outlook is open and runs on a schedule.


Thanks