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Putting your PST's on the LAN or WAN link,

I get asked about this a lot, and even though I've blogged about this in the past, people still think it's OK to put your PST's on the network somewhere.  Well don't!  I've dug out the kb article that explains why we don't support them.  These sort of things will happen...

All operations take longer.
Write operations can take approximately four times longer than read operations.
Outlook has slower performance than the Exchange Client.
For the reasons mentioned above, Offline Folders (.ost) files and personal address book (.pab) files on a network share that are accessed remotely are also unsupported configurations.  If you do have roaming users, have a look at the link to the Office resource kit for some tips on strategies for Outlook roaming, and configuring roaming users for Outlook..


 

Published Tuesday, July 26, 2005 1:53 PM by Eileen_Brown
Filed Under: , ,

Comments

Tuesday, July 26, 2005 9:08 AM by Troy Phillips

# PSTs are overused

Unfortunately PST files are overused - too many of our customers restrict the size of their users mailbox resulting in PST overuse.

I remember one client determined that more than 70% of the space on user home drives was taken up by PST files!
Tuesday, July 26, 2005 12:22 PM by Jimmy

# re: Putting your PST's on the LAN or WAN link,

Implement an Email Archiving solution and get rid of most of your PST files. Obviously remote workers will still use them but it means people don't worry about saving everything anymore as a web search engine to the archive is easy enough (quicker than using Outlook find infact).
Tuesday, July 26, 2005 12:30 PM by Brian Hoyt

# re: Putting your PST's on the LAN or WAN link,

Why use PST? The email data is just much more manageable on the server. Disk is cheap don't punish your users and make them waste time cleaning. Let them get their work done.
Tuesday, July 26, 2005 4:40 PM by Greg [MSFT]

# re: Putting your PST's on the LAN or WAN link,

Just to add yet another reason for it being bad......relating to backups this time.

When you open and close that pst, even if you don't change any data in it the file, it is flagged as having been changed - and your backup software will (assuming incremental or differentials are being used) back the whole file up again...

At Microsoft it is a stated policy that pst's cannot be stored anywhere on the network - if they are found.... they get deleted. Tough love. :-)
Tuesday, July 26, 2005 11:03 PM by Rickey Whitworth

# re: Putting your PST's on the LAN or WAN link,

I noticed you mentioned .ost files. Where are .ost files created by default and how can the location be changed? Why isn't it a group policy setting? I admit I haven't researched it fully, but I thought I would take the easy way and ask.
Wednesday, July 27, 2005 4:51 AM by Jimmy

# re: Putting your PST's on the LAN or WAN link,

Re. Backups, not totally true. Connected DataProtector can backup PST files with no problems even if the file has only changed slightly. It looks inside the PST's and backs up individual messages and attachments, so if nothing has changed it doesn't matter if Outlook accessed it, DataProtector will work it out. Cool eh!
Thursday, July 28, 2005 7:36 AM by shaheenb

# re: Putting your PST's on the LAN or WAN link,

The DLO Option for Vertias also does a good job with pst files.

http://seer.support.veritas.com/docs/268078.htm
Friday, July 29, 2005 2:58 AM by subject: exchange

# Weekend reading

Friday, July 29, 2005 2:59 AM by subject: exchange

# Weekend reading

Friday, July 29, 2005 3:41 AM by subject: exchange

# Weekend reading

Wednesday, August 03, 2005 1:45 PM by Eileen Brown's WebLog

# Password protecting PST's

Gosh!  My post last week about PST files started some discussion... They seem to be such an emotive...
Monday, August 08, 2005 8:43 AM by Greg [MSFT]

# re: Putting your PST's on the LAN or WAN link,

Just have to put a plug in for the upcoming Data Protection Manager product we are realeasing later this year - it can backup byte level changes made to pst's (as it can any file). I saw a presentation/demo of it last week and it looks great, it really does. You can download a beta from http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/dpm/download/default.mspx
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