I’m looking to establish mailbox size quotas. What is the ideal size limit that would still allow users plenty of space while allowing the server to work at it’s best performance?
Subject: Mailbox quotas
Hi Jerry,There are so many variables and dependencies that your question is virtually meaningless. If you are looking for an answer like “200 MB and not a byte more”, then you may be looking in vain.
Some questions you need to consider:
How many users do you have?
What sort of hardware do you have?
How much disk space do you have? And how easy is it to add more?
What document retention policies does your organisation have?
Do you have a policy for whether quotas can be raised or not?
Are you prepared for the additional support costs for managing quotas?
In my experience, it doesn’t matter what quota you set, some of your users will be diligent and keep under quota, and some will not (insisting that they “need” to keep all this stuff).
Whether you can enforce it or not will depend as much on your personality and what sort of support you get from your manager as much as anything else.
regards,
P
Subject: RE: Mailbox quotas
I have plenty of disk space on the AS400 that we are running. My problem is CPU horsepower. The CPU is consistently hitting 100% during the day as users hit their mailboxes. I have 1000 users, and 20% of them have mailboxes over 200 MB–a few are hitting over 1-2 GB.
Subject: RE: Mailbox quotas
Hmm - I’m not sure that implementing quotas will resolve your CPU problems. What is the CPU on that box anyway?
Are you running lots of iNotes (Domino web access) users, or are most of your mail users using a Notes client? The web client tends to be more CPU intensive than the Notes client.
During the day, what tasks are consuming most CPU cycles? I don’t know what tools are available in the operating system, but on the admin client server status tab, you can see which tasks are using what % of CPU. Are you seeing high numbers from any particular task? There might be something you can do if certain tasks are using most of the CPU.
Finally, are you considering upgrading to R7 anytime soon? If I recall correctly, it is supposed to perform quite a lot better than 6.5 (but hey, I’m sure they say that with EVERY release)
Subject: Mailbox quotas
Peter brings up some very good points. One that is faced every day by Admins is that “Google allows xxxMB of space.” Keep that in mind as you think about quotas.
BTW - my push back to similar quotas is to ask “Will gmail restore that deleted message?” Of course not. But the one thing that quotas will get you is a very easy way to determine your future disk needs.
Good luck. You may need it.
Gregg