Larger Mailboxes in Exchange

A whitepaper was posted this month at the Exchange Server TechCenter by Tom Di Nardo (Senior Technical Writer, Microsoft Exchange Server) on the subject of planning for larger mailboxes in Exchange 2007. In the white paper Tom makes reference to stubbing by third party archiving solutions. Here is what he says about the administrative problems with using stub files in Exchange:

• Server performance Removing the message bodies and attachments from Exchange reduces the mailbox size, but it does not significantly change the server performance for users accessing Exchange via Outlook in online mode and Outlook Web Access. Item counts are the primary performance driver for the Exchange store, and not aggregate size. For example, server performance with a folder containing 100 KB of full e-mail message items is similar to a folder containing 100 KB of stub files.

• Client complexity Because the use of stub files with a third-party archiving solution requires the deployment and use of Outlook add-ins, a significant amount of time must be spent by administrators to deploy and manage these add-ins. Administrator time is also required to assist end users with technical difficulties using the add-ins. Not deploying stub files removes all of this additional administrative work that must be performed, thereby allowing more time to administrators and end users.

I could not let this go by without some comment. First I am not sure I understand why he states that server performance is a problem with stubbing. While I might be in agreement that stubbing does not show a drastic improvement in server performance it does not adversely affect server performance. If I can increase the number of items in my mailbox that I have immediate access to without going to the archive and not degrade performance is that not an improvement? Having the 100KB of stubbed items might be similar in performance to 100KB of full data but it allows users easier access to more items without going to an archive.

The other thing he mentions as a negative is the use of a third-party add-in for outlook. I can’t cover how all archive vendors handle stubbing in the Outlook client so I will only speak to what Quest does (Full disclosure: I work for Quest and am probably biased). Archive Manager deploys a form through Exchange to the Outlook Client. No need for an add-in or a client installed at the desktop. While I can agree with Tom that this might be slightly more to set up, the benefits out-weigh the administrative burden.

However I do believe that the archiving market is headed away from storage management for email. As storage becomes cheaper and easier to manage for messaging systems (Exchange is a good example) the need is shifting towards longer term storage of data for compliance purposes. As users adopt the Exchange 2007 platform they might have less of a need for storage management. Not everyone is on Exchange 2007 though. There are still some customers on Exchange 5.5. Until Exchange 2007 (and future versions) is adopted in 80-90% of the market administrators will need a solution and storage management will still be feature that Archiving vendors will need to deliver.

White Paper link: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc671168(EXCHG.80).aspx

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Email Archiving, Compliance, eDiscovery, Exchange Server, Stubbing, Storage Management, Larger Mailboxes