The Domino Chick

To Archive, or Not to Archive

Friday, April 2nd, 2004

... that is the question.

I've been having an interesting debate with some colleagues over reducing disk space consumption. Of course, our biggest disk space consumers are mail databases. The use of the single-copy template has certainly helped, but we always get into circular arguments about other ways to force users to reduce the sizes of their mail files.

We can force users to archive using policies, but where do we place the archives? If we put them on the user's workstation, then they aren't being backed up. If we archive them to another server, then we are merely moving our disk space consumption problem to another location.

Enforcing quotas also presents an interesting set of problems. We can annoy users by reminding them that they are over quota and can't save any sent mail each time they send something, but savvy users can work around this by cc:ing themselves when they send a message. We can start holding mail for users that are over quota, but then we run the risk of having hundreds of messages sitting on the server, waiting for users to reduce the size of their databases before they can be delivered. What if 500 users are over quota at the same time? What if one of those messages is to a salesperson on the last day of the month, telling him they just need one last piece of information by 3:00 p.m. so that they can sign the contract? What if he doesn't reduce his mail database size until 3:15? We can also start rejecting inbound mail for users over quota, but I don't even want to get into the nightmare that would be for customer-facing users.

So, we've settled the debate (sort of) by deciding that forcing user behavior is not the answer - user education is the key to reducing mail database sizes. As we roll out Notes 6.5.1 to our user base, we are conducting training classes to introduce them to the new features. We've incorporated instructions on how to archive, how to delete large messages and/or remove the attachments, and emphasis on one of our favorite space-saving client features - reply without attachment. We've already noticed a shift in end user behavior and a slight reduction in mail database sizes for the people who have gone through training.

How do you manage your users' mail database sizes?

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Posted by: Kathleen McGivney at: 10:52:45 AM