That was fun while it lasted -- not

[trixtah]

Yet another problem with the Canberra mail server today, exactly the same as last time, and involving the same user's mailbox. However, since last time I had moved his mailbox to its own separate database, with its own set of transaction logs on a separate disk, I cannot for the life of me understand why transactions relating to his mailbox filled up everyone else's transaction log disk.

I suspect there was something going on with his EA's mailbox, since there were a few transactions relating to both her and his mailboxes just before everything went haywire. Her mailbox was still in one of the other databases. It isn't any longer, and neither is any other Blackberry user's.

It took me hours to move the 100 or so mailboxes, due to the ridiculous size some of them are. Also, no-one should have frigging 3000 Calendar items in Outlook, much less 5000 ...or 7000. A simple Calendar item is around 4KB - with copious notes and attachments, they can get much larger. 7000 x 4KB (let's be generous) is 27MB. A normal mailbox quota in our organisation is 80MB. No wonder these idiots keep whining for bigger mailboxes. (And yes, we send out advice urging users to clean out their Calendars regularly - we even sent  one out two weeks ago).

I'm very tempted to recommend a policy where Calendar items more than 13 months old get cleared out automatically. We'll still get some with 3000 items, but there aren't that many people having 10 meetings a day nearly every day of the year. I'm also going to implement a policy where Deleted Items more than 30 days old (or maybe 60) get cleared out. It's amazing how many people think it's an extra storage area... and who often labour under the misapprehension that Deleted Items somehow don't count as part of the mailbox quota.

Comments

[buddleia.livejournal.com]

We get warnings every so often that unsaved messages older than six months will be deleted. Seems fair!

[radicalyffe.livejournal.com]

It's amazing how many people think it's an extra storage area... and who often labour under the misapprehension that Deleted Items somehow don't count as part of the mailbox quota.

I KNOW RIGHT?

I learned that the hard way, after helpfully deleting someone's deleted items to speed up a sync with the exchange server. *sigh*

[trixtah.livejournal.com]

Hahahahahah!

Everyone gets burned by one of those when they start doing desktop support for Exchange users. There may have been some excuse for it about a decade ago, when most organisations used POP or IMAP, and the POP was stored on local disk, and the IMAP sent and deleted items were usually kept local too. But I'm sure 99.9999% of these users don't even know what IMAP is, and they still think Deleted Items is a sneaky sekrit storage bin!

[trixtah.livejournal.com]

Wanna come work at my place?

...Of course, that would actually necessitate a useful storage system that people are actually willing and capable of using (we have a shitty one that virtually everyone avoids).