PST backup plan!!!Help.

If your business requires that people keep all their emails, then perhaps your company needs to look at either 1)increasing mailbox size, adding stores, 2)using public folders for archiving or 3) looking into an exchange archiving system, such as one at www.gfi.com/wm


There are a few reasons why using PST's will become an administrative nightmare for you and your users:

1. You'll have to decide if you want the pst's to be stored on a network share, or locally on the machine.  If you decide to go with a network share, the mobile users will not be able to access their pst when working offline.  If you store the pst locally, you will need to configure your backup program to back up the pst's from each machine, think about that.  Saving the PST's in a foler in the users home directory on the network would be your best option for backup, as youre probably already backing up those folders.

2. PST's become increasingly corrupt as they gain file size.   PST's have a 2GB limit.  http://www.brienposey.com/kb/pst_maintenance.asp  Saving important mails in PST's will eventually lead to someone loosing important data.

Hello.  Outlook 2003 went to a UNICODE format to break the 2Gb limit; it's limit is now more than 20 Gb (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;830336).

As far as implementation, it's pretty simple.  
This link is to a detailed explanation for .pst implementation: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;829971

The following is a general explanation:
Ensure each user has a mapped drive to a network server and that the drive has a secured location for each user's .pst file.  You don't want others compromising the data.
In Outlook, go to Tools --> Options --> Mail Setup TAB --> Data Files BUTTON
Add the .pst, and choose the network drive as the location.
If you have mobile users, they can synchronize; they probably already do.
Just ensure that you backup the .pst files; also ensure the users' machines are off or disconnected from them during the backup.

It can be a pain to back these files up and manage them.  Veritas just bought KVS and has a solution for archiving email and getting rid of .pst files altogether, but the solution is very expensive, and from the sound of it, your company is trying to not spend any money to rsolve this issue.

It sounds like the users have already created their own .pst files on their workstations. You need a simple and fast way to copy them. I would use a login script. My solution has been tested with an Active Directory environment, I don't know about Novell, but you could test it. My solution will copy the .pst to a network share or you can modify it to copy where ever you want. We use kixtart for login scripts. www.kixtart.org

How to setup KiXtart with Active Directory
Go to www.kixtart.org and download the kixtart program.
On your domain controller there should be a share called netlogon.
Extract the kixtart program files into the netlogon share folder.
If you have multiple Domain Controllers, make sure this folder is replicated to the other DC's or copy to each DC.
This is where the user will run the kixtart.exe from.
If you don't have that share, you can create a share elsewhere and point to it in Active Directory. I'll describe that later.

Creating the user script.
I will post another reply with the script, copy the script in my following post into a .txt file and rename it as a .kix file i.e. login.kix
Place the login.kix file in the netlogon folder share.

Open Active Directory Users and Computers mmc console. Browse to OU container holding the users. Under the user properties click the profile tab and enter this line into the login script box.
kix32.exe login.kix

If you have to modify the login script for multiple users, this can be done within the Active Directory Users and Computers mmc console. Browse to the OU with the users and select all the users you want to modify. Right click and choose properties. You should have a window pop up that's labeled Properties on multiple objects. It looks just like a user profile box, but it will change the settings on the multiple objects.

Now, if you don't have a netlogon share you can create a share elsewhere. Extract the kixtart program into that share and copy the login.kix file there too. Below is a path to a server with folder shared as "kix"
\\server01\kix    

If you place the share elsewhere, you will have to put this path in the login script box instead.
\\server01\kix\kix32.exe "\\server01\kix\login.kix"


Notes about the following script. Right now it performs an incremental backup. If outlook is open when it is run, it kills the outlook process. Its backup is pointed to a single server. This would be bad if the users attempted to backup on a slow/out of office connection. On the backup server, each user must have a shared folder that matches their logon name. For us, that username folder is mapped as the u:\ drive. In the script the u:\ path is specified for the backup path. You could change it to \\server01\backup\@userid
Options if you want that I can add, the script will check to see if it is on a local subnet that the user is supposed to be at. (remote user).

"They're not using 2003 yet though.  And pst's, like mdb's cant be synched with offline files"  That is incorrect.... PST can't be synched by default, but just like anything else you can change the default values.  By default you can't synch   *.slm; *.mdb; *.ldb; *.mdw; *.mde; *.pst; *.db? files.   See Below:

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/Windows/XP/all/reskit/en-us/Default.asp?url=/resources/documentation/Windows/XP/all/reskit/en-us/prde_ffs_ypef.asp


http://blogs.msdn.com/jonathanh/archive/2004/12/09/279292.aspx

Hello Yap,

You can install Mobiliti's backup product, Continuity@Work on each user machine. You can then create a backup project to backup the user's pst file to the destination of your choice. The built in deployment kit of the product can be used to deploy projects and preferences to several users at one go. You can schedule backups so that the user need not remember to perform this task. The process can be made completely automatic and transparent. Also for pst files, after the first full copy, the subsequent backups are incremental.
 
For more information refer to the following links:
http://www.mobiliti.com/continuityVer5.html

Personal Folders (pst file) backup :

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=8B081F3A-B7D0-4B16-B8AF-5A6322F4FD01&displaylang=en

Just have this on all the workstations, it's a 2second install, ensure they have a shared network resource (like a home dir that is mapped by the logon scripts) and then use pfbackup to copy the local pst file to the share.

Simple as that.

If I need to explain more please let me know.

Jason

I don't understand how it makes sense to restrict storage on the mail server and then allow + encourage the users to exceed the limits on their own and still replicate / backup their files? If you have storage limitations, you'll have them on the whole line - including the backup. if you don't have limitations there, you should really enforce a one-location storage rule for mail, by raising the limits on the mailboxes at the server level.

You really need to propose a clean solution (that's what the exchange server is for!) instead of diversifying and making more headaches for the IT dept. ... not to mention the accountability (ouch!): what happens when the legals need "this specific email" which is either on the exchange server or in one of the 190+ PST-files? Don't make your job harder!
John