Thursday, May 8

Storing PST on server? You should think few times...

Recently, we have been busy touring Malaysia to share our thoughts about Microsoft Exchange Server. Hope the Exchange business will just flow into not only Max Solution, perhaps Microsoft too :)

However, in one of the bank that we visited, there is an interesting question and idea - We want to store all the PST to the network storage. Is it recommended?

After thinking for few seconds, for sure, the first question is, WHY?

Some reasons for the summary:
1) We want to keep the Exchange DB small
2) We want to keep a copy of users' email
3) Storage nowadays can consider cheap
4) Do not want to heavy load Exchange server...

Hold on... Do we need to put PST file in server to get those features?

Few things to share:

First of all, it is not "possible" or recommended to put all user's PST in a network storage. See the following article - a good one from Microsoft.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/297019/en-us

Second of all, to meet the auditors, governance compliances, a company should think about a cool recent product - DPM 2007. This will fulfill the requirements for 1,2 & 3...

Guys, this is our advice, to ensure you will be able to gain the performance, yet, protecting your data.

Do read Microsoft or our blogs for the next version of Exchange - another great product to solve most of the industry issues.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

How is that compares with EdgeSafe PST2PST backup?

Anonymous said...

To be more specific on this question ...

I know some of our clients are moving PST files to the desktops and notebooks. Than they use EdgeSafe for doing the incremental backup to the center.

Anonymous said...

Well we use EdgeSafe, and it is exactly what complemets Microsoft Recommendation to store PST on desktops. I simpaly help our organization back it up to a centarl location.

Kim

Anonymous said...

Just Tested Edgesafe..

I Agree with Kim, EdgeSafe really complements Microsoft recomendation.

But that is not all, since it also enables to retain history of deleted emails. So its really more than a simple backup of the PST.

Wayne

Derrickeilj said...

To be more specific on this question ... I know some of our clients are moving PST files to the desktops and notebooks. Than they use EdgeSafe for doing the incremental backup to the center.