Chapter 9: Imposing Limits


Overview

Imposing limits on users and mailboxes seems like a strange topic to which to dedicate an entire chapter. We feel this is an important topic because even in mature messaging environments (organizations that have had Exchange or some other client-server messaging system deployed for 10+ years), limits are often not imposed.

Mail administrators often cringe at the prospect of imposing limits on their users, certainly their VIP users. Imposing limits is a touchy subject, even with IT and company management, who may often feel that they are necessary but should not apply to them.

So why is this an important topic? Simple. You need to be configuring your organization for predictable operations. Every morning when you wake up and go to work, you need to have some assurances that, provided nothing terrible has happened, your mail system is in pretty much the same state it was in when you left it the day before. This not only helps with ongoing operations, it makes it easier to recognize when something has gone wrong.

Ensuring that your Exchange system is operating in a predictable fashion with respect to mailbox or message limitations mean that you do not exceed your designed disk capacity and you don't flood your network connections with messages that are too large. Operating predictably certainly does not stop at mailbox limits, but for purpose of this chapter, we will limit the scope to just predicting disk space usage and network usage.

Another important factor to consider when assigning limits for your users is that limits help prevent abuse of the mail system, such as a user sending a message to the entire Everyone distribution group advertising their garage sale or a user sending out a message with a 200MB attachment.

More and more organizations are faced with state, provincial, or federal government regulations. For example, users may be required to keep historical information available, which would in turn affect the limits you imposed on their mailboxes.

Failure to define and properly establish messaging system limits can have adverse or even catastrophic effects on your daily operations. This is very true of mailbox limits. More than a few Exchange administrators have came to work one morning only to discover that they are out of disk space on the database disk drive. Why? They were not on top of the mailbox growth and it caught them by surprise. Dealing with a server whose mailbox databases are dismounted because you are out of disk space is almost as difficult as facing management to explain why you are out of disk space and why you have to buy more.

Note 

The ultimate decision about limits and enforcement is usually "above our pay grade." Management has to understand why limits are necessary and what appropriate limits might be for your organization. Management must balance functionality, organizational requirements, and availability.

Although we certainly can't help you with your "political" issues, we can help you determine the right place to apply limits and maybe even suggest some appropriate limits. In this chapter, we will discuss a number of different approaches to applying messaging system limits.

Topics in this chapter include the following:

  • Applying mailbox-by-mailbox mail storage limits

  • Applying mailbox limits for an entire mailbox database

  • Applying message size limits

  • Applying limits to public folders




Mastering Microsoft Exchange Server 2007
Mastering Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 SP1
ISBN: 0470417331
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2004
Pages: 198
Authors: Jim McBee

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