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PToN
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join:2001-10-04
Houston, TX

PToN

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Mailbox sizes... WTF...?!?!?!

Ok,

i have never erased anything from my Gmail account and i have been using it ever since it was in beta, which i believe was in 2005. I have lots of emails with attachments ranging from pictures to source code. Still my entire mailbox is worth 1.1GB.

Then i have the company's email server. I have 1.3GB from 2008 till today. I think that's fine.

But i cannot understand how i have several users with 30+GB mailboxes.... We are looking into getting gmail for business, but they will only go up to 25GB and currently there is no way to up that.

Is this normal???

Exodus
Your Daddy
Premium Member
join:2001-11-26
Earth

Exodus

Premium Member

Sounds like you need a good dose of deduplication.

Weasel
Premium Member
join:2001-12-03
Minnesota

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I don't have any users quite that big but it is amazing how fast our exchange DB has exploded since we deployed two years ago.

DarkLogix
Texan and Proud
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join:2008-10-23
Baytown, TX

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And teach users how to zip files

one user here had been sending a monthly excel file that was over 80mb to multiple people, I zipped the file and bam under 5mb. (no clue why excel made the file so large)

Exodus
Your Daddy
Premium Member
join:2001-11-26
Earth

1 recommendation

Exodus

Premium Member

You should really have something like Sharepoint set up and then tell people to access the link.

donoreo
Premium Member
join:2002-05-30
North York, ON

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My wife would routinely have emails that are over 50MB in size because of attachments. Advertising and marketing types do this a lot.

DarkLogix
Texan and Proud
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join:2008-10-23
Baytown, TX

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We have some users that were over 30GB in mailbox size

This caused some DB corruption on an attempted move, which caused all kinda of crap to hit the fan.

now we're lowering the max size ever so slowly till it gets manageable to prevent this from ever happening again.
DarkLogix

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said by Exodus:

You should really have something like Sharepoint set up and then tell people to access the link.

Should is such a nice word isn't it.
so is collaboration, but sometimes it just doesn't happen.

Personally I find it crazy as even with my lack of archiving (because I don't want to split up my searchable mails (I often search for old info to remember the details of things) my mailbox is still under 2GB

Exodus
Your Daddy
Premium Member
join:2001-11-26
Earth

Exodus

Premium Member

Until you neuter the attachment size to like 2MB.

DC DSL
There's a reason I'm Command.
Premium Member
join:2000-07-30
Washington, DC
Actiontec GT784WN

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You need to spread the word to users that they MUST clean up their mailboxes by COB on [date]. Anything older than [days] still in their mailboxes at that time will be permanently, irrecoverably purged. Require that they reply to the email acknowledging they understand their compliance is mandatory. Then, do a CYA backup of the mailstore followed by the purge.

It also sounds like your org needs to implement and enforce a formal records retention policy that covers both paper and electronic information. Even if you're a small fry in an unregulated industry, you never know when you could be slapped with a subpoena for your mail store, archives, backups, even BYODs. You don't even have to be the ones directly involved in litigation: A number of my clients have been subpoenaed by simple virtue of having exchanged electronic or snail mail on a regular basis on matters completely unrelated to the litigation.

DarkLogix
Texan and Proud
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join:2008-10-23
Baytown, TX

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said by Exodus:

Until you neuter the attachment size to like 2MB.

Oh ya, we have distro groups set to max attachment size of 3mb, and nothing over 30mb, (I'd be all for 5mb across the board)

as it is I have to offten show people how to make a pdf smaller (I've had to help get 40MB PDF's down to 3MB because it was made at full quality and color and max compatibility.
amungus
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join:2004-11-26
America

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We have a few users with archives that are insane - in the 20-30GB range. I have no idea how or why. Marketing types, and some others who send massive spreadsheets with massive embedded images daily...

I'm in about the same boat as you though - somewhere just north of a gig per personal / work mailbox, and just don't understand the insanity.

Yeah, we also have Sharepoint, but it's a mess of some files being linked, some being within the system, and still others who barely know it exists. What can you do.

Didn't realize Google had such a limit though. You'd almost think that if anyone could/would provide 'unlimited everything' for something, it'd be them. Then again, that's what many users tend to think about storage in general; that it's unlimited, free, and super easy to manage, yet they do absolutely nothing, or as little as possible to manage their own data in any way whatsoever.

PToN
Premium Member
join:2001-10-04
Houston, TX

PToN

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Dedup sounds nice, but it doesnt play well when restoring data. This is something similar to using Eudora back in the day... Good luck getting the attachment that came with that email..!!

We have lowered the attachment size to 10MB, i guess they must be sending multiple 10MB emails.

I do agree with the retention policy, but i find it hard to get upper management behind this. They are the ones that use the "Deleted Items" folder store emails...

We are working on deploying Sharepoint or Alfresco so that they can easily send a link, but i think i'd have to be harsh on this, like drop all attachments from internal emails or something like this.

DarkLogix
Texan and Proud
Premium Member
join:2008-10-23
Baytown, TX

DarkLogix

Premium Member

Also one feature of exchange (similar to dedup) I'm told "single instance" (or atleast that's what I recall it being called by a IT manager)

It was that when you send an attachment to multiple people that it only counts as one e-mail in your sent items, but when the mailbox is moved the space in the exch DB multiplies by the number of people you sent it to.

(Not really sure of the accuracy there but anyway)

PToN
Premium Member
join:2001-10-04
Houston, TX

PToN

Premium Member

Yeah, but that has the same challenges when it comes the time to do a restore... Maybe exchange has an effective way of getting it done.

Hall
MVM
join:2000-04-28
Germantown, OH

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Must be nice.... at my old job, a major corporation, they still restricted users to a 500mb mailbox. Anything above that, you have to store locally. Now, I'm not saying give every users a multi-gigabyte mailbox, but 500mb was painful to work with.
Moffetts
join:2005-05-09
San Mateo, CA

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I have a client that packs on about 15GB of new mail every 12 months. Keeping her (2007) OST in check is a constant battle.

donoreo
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join:2002-05-30
North York, ON

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said by Hall:

Must be nice.... at my old job, a major corporation, they still restricted users to a 500mb mailbox. Anything above that, you have to store locally. Now, I'm not saying give every users a multi-gigabyte mailbox, but 500mb was painful to work with.

Bigger companies tend to have smaller email sizes. I am working for the largest organisation I have worked work for and we have the smallest mailbox size.

DC DSL
There's a reason I'm Command.
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join:2000-07-30
Washington, DC
Actiontec GT784WN

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said by PToN:

We have lowered the attachment size to 10MB, i guess they must be sending multiple 10MB emails.

I uniformly restrict attachments to 2mb because many receiving sites still cutoff at that. For large file exchanges, we use the clients' websites or a cloud solution. Not only does this eliminate a lot of clutter and redundancy in the mailstore and file system, it also frees-up bandwidth across the board, not to mention eliminates the time-wasting calls about "I've tried sending this message 10x and it keeps bouncing with 'too big for mailbox'..."

I also restrict mailbox size to between 2 and 3.5gb. I started doing this after a client was subpoenaed for the emails of specific employees (not the whole organization). This guarantees that a mailbox can be dumped in its entirety at any time to a PST that fits on a single DVD.
said by PToN:

I do agree with the retention policy, but i find it hard to get upper management behind this. They are the ones that use the "Deleted Items" folder store emails...

I know that pain all too well. However, my experience has been that after they've had a few weeks to get the bitching about the tyrant CIO and yet another of his stupid rules out of their their system, you don't hear much, if any, further grousing about it.

One tactic I have used with those hell-bent on misusing the Deleted folder is to send out a notice that routine cleanup on the mailboxes will be performed and that anything in the deleted messages folders will be permanently lost as a result...and that this will be the case from now on to avoid problems with the server. Dump the folder to a PST, delete the contents, and set Outlook to empty it on exit. (Make sure Exchange is set to not purge deleted items until after backing-up.) The user will freak the f* out. "I said this was going to happen." They usually get with the program after that.

Another tactic is to make sure their wastebasket is overflowing (add stuff from others if necessary), hide it before the cleaning crew arrives. Put it back after they're gone. The person will certainly note (and likely complain) that there's stuff in there. Teachable moment: It's the same as not emptying your deleted items folder. Use mail folders correctly and you won't have problems.

donoreo
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join:2002-05-30
North York, ON

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said by PToN:

I do agree with the retention policy, but i find it hard to get upper management behind this. They are the ones that use the "Deleted Items" folder store emails...

The first time I saw someone doing this it was a huge WTF?!?! moment. I told them that there is an option to empty "Deleted Items on Exit" and that with any update Microsoft issues it could get turned on by accident or on purpose in the update and they would lose everything. They stopped using Deleted Items as a filing location.

Hall
MVM
join:2000-04-28
Germantown, OH

Hall to donoreo

MVM

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Some of their arguments against larger mailboxes were in turn related to the number of users: Larger mailboxes x 10,000+ users is a lot of disk space, # of backup tapes req'd, etc

Realistically though, not every user will max out their quota.

Ironically, we were nailed by Sarbanes-Oxley for data retention, but IT still made it the user's problem to handle.

SHoTTa35
@kfvaluation.com

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Anon

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I allow up to 50MB attachments on the Receive connector for Exchange 2012 because we deal with banks and other "secure" places that aren't allowed to use certain protocols (FTP) or sites (Dropbox & Google Drive blocked), USB Mas Storage devices are obviously blocked as well via Group Policy so the only way for them to get sometimes hundreds of pages of documents is via email (or physical mail, FedEx/UPS/USPS).

Our send connector could be 100MB but I've found basically nobody can accept that anyways so I've set it at 20MB

My Inbox of 2yrs now is like 5.7GB with about 12,000 messages in Outlook. I've set a 10GB limit anyways so better start cleaning up or no more emails for you!

veunad
What Does This Do?
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join:1999-08-06
Alpharetta, GA

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Is this normal usage or have you ruled out the Exchange iOS BUG? (Not sure if you have exchange).

Example:

We took some dramatic pre-engagement actions of cutting off active sync access for 400ish iOS users, when the iOS 6.0X bug was first communicated, made them turn off calendaring, contact the helpdesk, etc, to get Active sync (re)enabled.

Week or so goes by; we have had two users still get bit, and one had a 30GB mailbox, we were able to run a PowerShell command to kill the offending entry, the other though had a number of users using a recurring meeting, this specific users mailbox scaled to 130GB (6-7 meeting created every second or so). Had to drop the mailbox completely.

More on topic, we have a 10MB perimeter attachment limit for primary channels, (Secondary channels have 25MB), the mailboxes are limited to 2GB and prevent sending when this is exceeded; warning sent at 1.8GB.

When first looking into the iOS BUG, of the iOS users, 2/3 had mailboxes in the 1-1.5GB range.

PToN
Premium Member
join:2001-10-04
Houston, TX

PToN

Premium Member

as mentioned, we dont run Exchange. We run Postfix+Dovecot
lorennerol
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join:2003-10-29
Seattle, WA

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said by DarkLogix:

Also one feature of exchange (similar to dedup) I'm told "single instance" (or atleast that's what I recall it being called by a IT manager)

MS removed SIMS in Exchange 2010. They published a long and rambling explanation about why. It had something to do with cheap disk space and a performance increase.

The vast majority of these huge mailboxes I see is just laziness. A quick inspection of the user's inbox, sent, and deleted folders typically reveal tens of thousands of emails; they just never clean anything up.

I've given up harping about it. I just tell clients they either change the habits of users or throw money at the problem. Except the few still on Exchange 2003 who have hit the max database size and are forced to cleanup, they all choose to spend money.

DarkLogix
Texan and Proud
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join:2008-10-23
Baytown, TX

DarkLogix

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Ya just sort the sent items by size and look out.

MineCoast
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Pensacola, FL

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I will say that it isn't usual.

The largest exchange mailbox I know we have is well over 100+ GB, and the largest I personally have ran across was 65+ GB. I run across 20+ GB mailboxes on a daily basis.

DC DSL
There's a reason I'm Command.
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join:2000-07-30
Washington, DC
Actiontec GT784WN

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said by lorennerol:

said by DarkLogix:

Also one feature of exchange (similar to dedup) I'm told "single instance" (or atleast that's what I recall it being called by a IT manager)

MS removed SIMS in Exchange 2010. They published a long and rambling explanation about why. It had something to do with cheap disk space and a performance increase.

Way back when a domain consisted of servers that mostly sat within a short cable hop of each other, it made sense to single-instance attachments. Now that the servers can be all around the planet it poses countless issues to maintain sync and consistency...attachments or not.

For the enlightenment of the unrepentant recalcitrants, I stage the occasional "blow away the mailbox" demonstrations. After dumping to a PST and copying it to a couple of locations, I press the magic *POOF!* button and wipe their messages out of existence. Daddy does his magic and fixes and tells them they have until COB the next day to get it cleaned up and to keep it clean because it could happen again...and you never know when it will be something that can't be recovered. A few times the mortal didn't comply so I did it again and "could only recover" the last month's worth of stuff that was in the inbox. Followed up with a memo to them and their bosses that the mortals were warned, did not heed, violated policy, and I would hear no further complaining about the matter. The message was received and understood. (Always make sure you have copies so you can retrieve anything truly critical.)
Netkeys
join:2000-12-08
Hollywood, FL

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I have a number of insurance agency's for clients and there top performers and agents handling commercial account can generate about 30 gig's a year easily. I was looking at new hosting services and finally decided to stick with gmail business and start achieving with Mailstore. The problem with insurance agencies is you have to save ever message for legal reasons.

With Mailstore I can backup (archive) nightly and delete from Gmail when close to limit and it has a Outlook plug in so access to the archived messages is quick and easy. Also if there is a problem with Gmail or internet access they still have access to the archives on the local server. Is the best and happens to be the most cost effective option I could find.

Having the legal requirements really takes more options away.

chip89
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join:2012-07-05
Columbia Station, OH

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Outlook has a tool that can be configured to purge the inbox based on information that the user tells it when to do so. The tool is called sweep.