At my job the people here are email whores. They send out crazy emails (work related though) and save everything. Most of the people's outlook pst files are 1 gig in size at the current moment. On the exchange server would it store the 1 gig of emails + the contacts?

EDIT: We are using POP mail, and the emails are stored locally on the computer.

 

Jo reason it shouldn't be able to store it as long as you have enough space. I would suggest limiting the users to no mor ethan 500 meg each. Do they have a business reason to store so many emails? If not, gain control and set limits. Also PST file can become very unstable once they get over 500 mb in my experience. If you can't repair them when they become damaged, your user base will bet real pissy. And remember: Users, you can't live with them and you can't kill them!

 

Exchange Server Standard Edition has a store limit of 16 GB. Keep that in mind. If you want to go over 16GB you need to step up to Exchange Advanced.

 

Some other bits of information for you.

First, Exchange uses what's known as "single instance storage." If multiple users save the exact same message, only one copy of it will actually be stored in the Exchange information store. How much this acutally buys you is open to interpretation, but the feature is there.

Second, is your Windows network already based on Active Directory? If not, you pretty much have to do that first before you can put Exchange in.

Third, Exchange has what's called Mailbox Manager. You can set this on each of the built-in folders to automatically delete messages that are older than X number of days or larger than X kilobytes. For example, we have it set for most of our users to delete messages from "deleted items" that are older than 7 days and from "sent items" that are older than 30 days.

 

If you have Exchange, why are you not using MAPI?

 

Hmm that might be a problem. But generally all the email has to be kept because clients ask us for services and prices. For some reason I have no idea Y they often dispute this. Also internally things like this happen. It often kept for proof or a reminder of something that was sent. Sometimes it can be more than 1 year ago. Anybody know how much the software is?

 

Right now I don't, we are using pop. Many of the users have 1 gig of emails store locally.

 

Probably makes backups a bitch.

 

Pricing varies a lot in M$ stuff. It depends on the size of your company and what type of license agreement they have. I'd recommend finding this out and then contacting whatever reseller your license agreement is with and asking if Exchange can be purchased under the same agreement. Don't forget the desktop CAL's as well as Exchange itself.