EV 2007 for Exchange 2003 - gauging perfromance gains - question

[j-mo]

Hello,

I've been archiving with EV 2007 SP4 for about 6 months now.  The last month I've really gotten agressive with archiving due to disk I/O problems with my exchange server.  The results are that things are running better but still not optimal.  What I've realized as that while my mailboxes/stores have been reduced drastically I still have so many items in Exchange.  I'm wondering if others have seen this and if they've turned/removed off shortcuts - maybe forcing users to seach the vault using their browser?

In reading best practices for Exhchange performace they reccomend no more than 5000 itmes in a mailbox.  I've got some users with 200-300MB mailboxes but 30,000 items.  I wonder how much archiving is really helping???

Just wanted to get some high level thoughts.

Thanks for any input-

[MichelZ]

Hi Deleting shortcuts certainly helps out here. We are deleting them after 2 years. I think usually mails which are this old are not required very often anymore... Cheers Michel

[MichelZ]

Oh, and you might want to defrag your store after aggressive archiving, this *could* help a little bit, too...

[j-mo]

Oh, and you might want to defrag your store after aggressive archiving, this *could* help a little bit, too...

vcare Infosystems AG - www.vcare-it.com || Enterprise Vault Tools - www.evtools.net

Thanks.  Yeah I just moved all my mailboxes to new stores.  We need almost 24-7 uptime so I can't dismount exchange stores but movign to anew store defrags nicely.

Regarding shortcuts - I can set the shortcut life in EV?  Can you point me towards that?

THanks

[MichelZ]

Yes, you can. Go to the Mailbox Policy ( -> Policies -> Exchange -> Mailbox), select your policy -> Properties -> Shortcut Deletion. Cheers Michel

[j-mo]

Ahh, I see. I recall now.  I have to look into enabling this. Folks won't be happy. 

Jsut in case, can this be undone?

Thanks for your help!

[MichelZ]

No, this cannot be undone easily. Are your users already using cached mode? This could reduce load, too..?

[j-mo]

I see.  Well I guess they will have to tough it out and use the search funtionalities.

We unfortuately cannot use cached mode.  I work for a trading firm and every second counts with email.

Thanks again!

[MichelZ]

An additional recommendation if you decide to enable shortcut deletion: Try to start with an older date, like 4 Years and see what happens, and if you get complains and things. Another thing to remember is that the shortcut age by default is calculated by the time the item was archived, and not by the age of the mail item. So a 5 year old e-mail shortcut doesn't get deleted after 2 years, if the e-mail was just archived 1 year ago.... Just keep that in mind. Cheers Michel