Exchange and Outlook UPDATE, Outlook Edition—brought to you by Exchange & Outlook Administrator, the print newsletter with practical advice, how-to articles, tips, and techniques to help you do your job today.
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(below COMMENTARY)
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April 23, 2002—In this issue:
1. COMMENTARY
- A Mailbox-Size Management Strategy
2. NEWS AND VIEWS
- Klez.H Worm Can Reveal Private Information
3. ANNOUNCEMENTS
- Need 24 x 7 Availability?
- Get One Step Closer to Certification at CertTutor.net
4. RESOURCE
- Tip: Modifying Permissions on the Organizational Forms Library
5. NEW AND IMPROVED
- IzySoft Announces IzyMail Availability
6. CONTACT US
- See this section for a list of ways to contact us.
1. COMMENTARY
(contributed by Sue Mosher, News Editor, [email protected])
Balancing reasonable mailbox size with acceptable backup and restore times is a continuing challenge in the Exchange world. UPDATE reader and Exchange consultant Nathan Black shared the solution he has developed, along with some insights into different types of Outlook users.
Black has identified three types of email users. Type A users delete everything fairly quickly and never hit their mailbox-size ceiling, so administrators generally don't need to worry much about them. The two other types store messages for future use, either because the messages contain some business value (Type B) or because they answer a question that will probably come up again (Type C). Type B users are fairly organized--they use some kind of folder structure to make it easy to locate items, filing messages by project name, for example. Their mailboxes might grow steadily, but they seldom contain nonbusiness mail. Type C users are disorganized. Their Inboxes may have 1000 or more items, including daily newsletters from a year or two ago, and their mailboxes grow rapidly. Fortunately, says Black, Type C users appear to comprise only about 10 percent of the population.
Black's solution, which he calls "Home Folders," is aimed mainly at the Type B user-–one with a steadily growing mailbox but an organized practice for deleting and refiling messages-–but might also help Type C users get their mailboxes under control. He sets up primary mailbox servers with 50GB to 70GB mailbox stores and enforces a mailbox limit of 70MB. However, Black doesn't encourage users to export old but still useful information to personal folder .pst files. Instead, a set of public folder servers with larger (100GB to 150GB) stores provides each Type B and C user with his or her own "home folder," in which the users can create whatever hierarchy they need to store their older items. Users have full responsibility for moving items into their home folders but must move items manually. (Outlook's AutoArchive feature can use only a personal folder .pst file, not a public folder, as its target.) The home folder servers have Deleted Item Retention turned on so that users can recover items that they inadvertently remove from their home folders.
Restoring one of the mailbox servers takes about an hour, and the "archive" public folder servers have recovery times of 3 to 5 hours. Black cites two main drawbacks of this home folders approach. One is that public folders let users search only one folder at a time, unless you include an index server in the configuration. The other is that the email portion of the organization's document-retention/destruction plan rests on users, so education and supervision are crucial.
Black isn't the only one to come up with an archive solution that relies on Exchange as the data repository. The same approach is at the heart of C2C Systems' Archive One ( http://www.c2c.com ), which addresses some of the user issues that Black identified. Archive One moves items automatically from primary mailbox storage to a long-term-storage Exchange server, based on policies that administrators establish. The archiving process has an option to leave behind in the original folder a small (less than 1KB) "ghost message" that links to the archived item. Thus, the fact that items have been archived can be essentially transparent to the user.
C2C General Manager Dave Hunt says that using Exchange as the sole data store means that administrators don't need to use different tool sets, one for Exchange management and another for managing the archive database. He suggests that organizations using Exchange 2000 Server might want to use Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server (formerly code-named Tahoe) to index the contents of both front-end mail and back-end archive servers, thus working around the subfolder-search limitation that Black raised.
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2. NEWS AND VIEWS
Kaspersky Labs reports that the Klez.H worm that began spreading last week attaches a file from an infected user's system as it propagates itself and therefore could leak confidential information. To prevent infection, users can install an update for Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) that has been available for more than a year. Outlook 2002, Outlook 2000 with Microsoft Office 2000 Service Pack 2 (SP2), and Outlook 2000 or Outlook 98 with the Outlook Email Security Update are also protected because they block the .exe file attached to the worm message.
> http://www.kaspersky.com/news.html?id=570164
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/downloads/critical/q290108/default.asp
3. ANNOUNCEMENTS
High-availability networks, systems, and applications are crucial to every business. Sign up for our free Webinar taking place on May 24 (sponsored by MKS), and find out how to achieve 24 x 7 availability on Windows 2000. Windows & .NET Magazine author Tim Huckaby shares his expertise on load balancing, monitoring, and more. Register today!
http://www.winnetmag.com/webinar/availability.cfm
Announcing the CertTutor.net Web site! Here you can find practice exams, discussion forums, articles, and much more--all designed to help you reach your goal of Microsoft or Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) certification. Check it out!
http://www.certtutor.net
4. RESOURCE
(contributed by Sue Mosher, [email protected])
Q: How can I give a user full control over the Organizational Forms Library in Exchange 2000 Server?
A: The Microsoft article "XADM: How to Create Organizational Forms Library in Exchange 2000 Server" ( http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;q244591 ) explains how to create a companywide forms library. To modify permissions on the library, open Exchange System Manager (ESM), expand Folders, then right-click Public Folders and choose Show System Folders. Bring up the Properties dialog box for the EFORMS REGISTRY/Organization Forms folder. On the Permissions tab, you can set Client Permissions as you would with any other folder.
See the Exchange & Outlook Administrator Web site for more great tips from Sue Mosher.
http://www.exchangeadmin.com
5. NEW AND IMPROVED
(contributed by Bob Kretschman, [email protected])
IzySoft announces the availability of IzyMail for Windows XP and Windows 2000. The IzyMail gateway application connects MSN Hotmail to popular email applications such as Eudora, IncrediMail, The Bat!, and Outlook, letting users complement the conventional browser interface with automated rule processing and advanced antivirus or spam-protection tools. IzyMail supports sending and receiving MSN Hotmail over standard Internet protocols POP3 and SMTP, and the product can run on one computer, in a small home network, on an organization's network, or on a public server. Pricing begins at $29.95 for a single-user license and $79.95 for a network license. Large network and site licenses are available. For more information, contact IzySoft.
http://www.izymail.com
6. CONTACT US
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