I’m going out on a limb here and going to write about something work related. Only because I’ve read many trains of though on the subject, at many different sources.
The place where I work uses large graphic files. It’s necessary because graphics are a large part of our business. We have an FTP site to collect most graphics for production. Often times customers will send files to reps, or visa versa for proofing purposes. The nature of business also requires us to hang on to a lot of these files and their correspondence in the case of a repeat order in the future. This can be 2 days to 2 years!
We’ve recently moved from a peer-to-peer architecture to client server. In the old days of .pst’s I was able to keep users down to the 2GB limit by having them create new .pst for each customer or group of customers. Now were using Active Directory and Exchange. Small Business Server 2003, with enterprise edition Exchange 2003. Raid 5, tape backup, etc etc. I’ve already patched the server with the Microsoft patch that moves the exchange limit up to 75GB total.
I removed the size limits in exchange at the outset of my installation, because flags were going off everywhere while I was trying to install it and convert us over. Now that were running and stable, it’s time to start making and enforcing policy. I already see 4 users over 2GB, and 2 of them over 4GB! Amazingly enough, 2 years ago that was the size of their entire hard drive.
I do believe we need to keep at least 1yr of email for records, but some users feel that isn’t enough. I can’t really disagree with them. It’s their job they are supporting by these records. However, I’ve also noticed while repairing 1 issue or another on some workstations that “Hey Joe let’s go have a beer after work” mail message from 2 years ago in with all the ‘important messages’.
This brings me to wonder what are better methods for holding both the images they save along with their correspondence? If users don’t have good house keeping in their mail, they most likely won’t have it in a file share either.
What is a ‘best practice’ for this?
If they use archiving, how can I be assured that they are using it right?
Do I need to train all 15 users how to do this and babysit them on a monthly basis to make sure this is done right?
I would gladly accept any suggestions from experienced admins as well as users!
Technorati Tags: microsoft, exchange, email, email limit
November 1st, 2006 at 8:46 pm
You could always try a source code repository like Subversion. It also allows users to check-in and check out files to prevent people from both making separate changes.
Programs like subversion are usually used by programmers, but some graphics people are starting to take to the idea too.