Mailbox and Message Size Limits

GroupWise has had an option to limit mailbox sizes since version 6.0, but over the years many improvements and enhancements have been made to the original concept. GroupWise 7 not only limits the size of the online mailbox, but also can manage the size of the offline caching or remote mailbox. Furthermore, administrators can now configure GroupWise so that they receive notifications when a user's mailbox size is exceeded, as shown in Figure 33.1.

Figure 33.1. New mailbox size features in GroupWise 7: the option to limit the size of the caching mailbox as well as to send notifications to the administrator

In the old days, a user with a caching mailbox would never be bothered with the limitations of his online mailbox, because the caching client software would not know about those limitations and would look only at the space of the local hard disk of the laptop or desktop. If the online mailbox of a user would hit the limit, but the user was only using caching mode, in some cases the user might not even be aware of the restrictions of his online mailbox. However, messages would not be sent anymore because the limit was exceeded. That's all over now with GroupWise 7, because you can apply the same limits to the caching or remote mailbox as well.

Note

Be careful when applying this feature to existing caching mailboxes. If you do set a limit, this algorithm will do exactly what you want: It will limit the size of the caching mailbox. Depending on what other options you've selected, this could mean that this limit will now indeed be applied to this mailbox. If a user already has a caching mailbox over the limit she might be forced to start cleaning before anything else can be done. Our advice is to make sure you know the size of your mailboxes, not only in online mode but also in caching mode. And don't be surprised if in some cases the caching mailbox is larger than the online mailbox.

Also note that applying mailbox size limits to caching or remote mailboxes will work only when the GroupWise 7 client is used. The GroupWise 6.5 client has no clue how to handle this.

An Overview on How to Enable Mailbox and Message Size Limits

Let's take a high-level overview of the mechanism to manage the mailbox size first, before diving into the details. To enable this, we must take the following steps:

1.	Investigate the current mailbox size to determine the right mailbox size limits.
2.	Communicate with the users about the new policy and the consequences.
3.	In ConsoleOne, configure the client options for a domain, post office, or user.
4.	When first used, run a GWCheck job to make sure that the settings are correctly pushed into the user database.
5.	Monitor the proceedings and apply changes when necessary.

So let's take a closer look at these steps.

Note

Be aware that currently the mailbox size restrictions will be shown in the Windows client and in WebAccess, but not yet in the cross-platform client on Linux and MAC.

Determining Current Mailbox Sizes

We can use standard GroupWise tools to determine the mailbox size. Just run GWCheck and gather the statistics, from which we can determine the current mailbox sizes, as illustrated in these steps:

1.	In ConsoleOne, select either a post office or one or more users, and select the menu option Tools, GroupWise Utilities, Mailbox/Library Maintenance (right-clicking won't work if you've selected multiple users). Tip If you select one or more users, you will get a result file per user; if you select a complete post office, you will get the details of all users in a single result file. In most cases, depending on your needs, you might want to select a post office to get one (large) file with all results, instead of receiving potentially hundreds of separate result files.
2.	Select the action Analyze/Fix Databases and be sure to enable only Contents and Collect Statistics. On the Databases tab, at the bottom, enable User and Message. On the Results tab, make sure that the administrator gets a copy; you could also send a copy directly to your own mailbox. Some of these options are shown in Figure 33.2. Figure 33.2. Options to collect information about the current mailbox sizes using GWCheck Note You can also use the standalone Win32 GWCheck utility with the same parameters, but as discussed in earlier chapters, for speed and other reasons we prefer to run the GWCheck on the POA.
3.	Open one of the mailboxes where the log file have been sent, and take a look at the results. You should see something like what is shown in Figure 33.3. Figure 33.3. The details of one user in the GWCheck log-file: the mailbox of this user is 55134KB; there are no mailbox size limits yet

As the example in Figure 33.3 shows, by using the GWCheck log files you can eventually find all the necessary details to create a proper report, on which you can base your recommendations for the new mailbox size limits. However, we would like to point out some very useful tools:

• GWAVA has a product called Redline that can generate reports like this automatically in a much more readable format. Redline offers much more; check it out at www.gwava.com.

• IntelliReach offers MessageInsight, capable of generating numerous reports about your GroupWise system. You can find more info at www.intellireach.com.

• If you're just interested in a more comprehensive report about mailbox sizes, you might like to take a look at GWMBSize, a free tool that just creates mailbox size reports. You can find GWMBSize on Novell Cool Solutions at www.novell.com/coolsolutions/tools/14034.html.

We very much like the more advanced tools such as GWAVA and IntelliReach, but in this case as a first step we've used the much simpler GWMBSize tool to make our GWCheck log files more readable. Part of the result is shown in Figure 33.4.

Figure 33.4. GWMBSize offers a much more drilled-down report about mailbox sizes than the normal GWCheck log can offer

As you can see in this example, the largest mailbox is 574MB and the average mailbox size is 94MB. The difficulty is, of course, to determine the necessary mailbox size restrictions. Either you can create a very liberal mailbox size restriction for everyone, in this case, for example, 750MB, or you can create several levels, for example, "normal" users would be able to store 250MB and IT users would be able to store 750MB. In conjunction with the mailbox size, you might also want to set a maximum message size, making sure that users won't be able to use your GroupWise system to send all these nice music files or movies to their friends.

Let's assume that this organization has enough disk space to allow every user to use 500MB for their mailbox and the warning lights will start blinking if a user reaches the 75% limit. In our example we will also implement a 1MB maximum message size.

Communicating with Your Users About Mailbox and Message Size Limits

Before you can enable mailbox size limits, you must certainly inform your users about the consequences. Also, you may want to consider phasing in the mailbox size limits in two parts. For example, in the first phase you could set the mailbox size limit to the maximum mailbox size limit of 4,000MB (4GB). Most of your users will not exceed this maximum, but all users will get the Mailbox Size tool enabled in their GroupWise client. Then the users get a chance to get more familiar with the tool, before ever having to use it to get in compliance with your mailbox size policy. Then in the second phase, when you have actually set the mailbox size limit, you should make the users aware that they now might see a first warning if they exceed the limit you've configured, in our case 75%, as shown in Figure 33.5. The GroupWise WebAccess client will also indicate to a user the percentage of the allocated disk space that they have taken, as shown in Figure 33.6.

Figure 33.5. The GroupWise Win32 client will warn the user when the threshold for the mailbox size limit is exceeded. Also notice the Mailbox Size indicator at the bottom of the client

Figure 33.6. The GroupWise WebAccess client will warn the user when the threshold for the mailbox size limit is exceeded. There is a Mailbox Usage indicator in the upper-right corner

In the GroupWise Win32 client the user will have the option to use the mailbox cleanup tool, as shown in Figure 33.7.

Figure 33.7. The mailbox cleanup tool in the GroupWise Win32 client

Of course, a user can choose to ignore all these warnings, but as soon as the mailbox size limit is exceeded, at the next login the user will be forced to clean up, as shown in Figure 33.8.

Figure 33.8. The user is forced to use the mailbox cleanup tool when the mailbox size limit is exceeded

Because you will also implement message size restrictions, you will want to inform your users about what they will see if they try to send a message that exceeds the limit, as shown in Figure 33.9.

Figure 33.9. This user is trying to share a new 8.36MB version of Acrobat with a co-worker via email; of course, he should not be surprised to get this warning

Now that you've communicated about all of these limitations, you're ready to start the implementation of these restrictions.

Implementing the Mailbox and Message Size Limits

After you've determined the mailbox and message size restrictions and you've informed your users about the new policy, you can start with the implementation, which is actually pretty simple. Let's take a closer look at the steps:

1.	In ConsoleOne, select either a post office or one or more users, and select the menu option Tools, GroupWise Utilities, Client Options (right-clicking won't work if you've selected multiple users).
2.	In the Client Options screen, click on Send and go to the tab called Disk Space Mgmt, as shown earlier in Figure 33.1. Select the options as discussed previously, including the options to send notifications to the administrator for both events. Tip Be sure to check whether the administrator option on all of your domain objects is indeed configured as needed. In too many cases, we've seen that this was not properly filled or all the admin messages were sent to a mailbox that nobody ever bothered to look into. Especially in this case, consider creating rules to forward messages with certain subjects to other (departmental) administrators.
3.	After enabling mailbox and message size restrictions for the first time, you probably will get a warning like the one shown in Figure 33.10, which encourages you to run a Mailbox/Library Maintenance. This is indeed necessary to push the right fields and values into the user databases, so be sure to run this as suggested. Figure 33.10. After enabling mailbox or message size restrictions for the first time, you likely will get this warning message Note In our testing we found that the GroupWise Administrator software takes a little while to launch the Mailbox/Library Maintenance screen. Don't worry; it will come up eventually, based on our testing.
4.	If you click Yes, this version of the ConsoleOne snap-ins will immediately direct you to GWCheck with the correct options, as shown in Figure 33.11. Figure 33.11. The GWCheck screen will be automatically launched with the correct options

And that's it. When your users restart their client, they should be able to see the mailbox size indicator at the bottom of the Win32 client or in the upper-right corner of WebAccess. And whenever they try to send a message that is larger than allowed, they will get a warning like that shown in Figure 33.9.

Monitoring Mailbox and Message Size Limits

If in the previous steps you indeed have enabled the options to be notified if somebody exceeds the threshold or mailbox size restrictions, you can respond as soon as possible. But even better than being reactive, you should be proactive by using the techniques mentioned in earlier sections. Just run your GWCheck regularly and use GWMBSize or one of the other tools mentioned. An example of a GWMBSize report that shows the mailbox size thresholds is shown in Figure 33.12.

Figure 33.12. A simple report showing that the first two users have exceeded their mailbox size limit or threshold