Question

Maximum OST File Size

Asked by: ics45

Hi,
We have a customer in desperate need of larger ost files.
They currently use Exchange 2003 and Outlook 2003 with all files cached locally.
They also are very heavy email users and constantly have to archive emails to keep under the 2GB limit.
They will upgrade to exchange 2007 and outlook 2007.
My understanding is the database on the server can get up to 16TB in size - but my question is does anybody know the maximum individual user mailbox size limit on exchange 2007 and the local ost file size limit (possibly 20GB??)?
I have tried emailing Microsoft - but they don't answer the question!!
Many thanks in advance,
Mike

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Asked On
2008-04-22 at 08:24:03ID23343283
Tags

microsoft

,

outlook

,

2007

,

maximum ost file size

Topic

Exchange Email Server

Participating Experts
4
Points
50
Comments
7

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Answers

 

by: icorpsPosted on 2008-04-22 at 09:03:36ID: 21412489

The larger the OST, the worse outlook will perform.  I've worked with many clients that had users have OST's well over 2GB's, but as they grow, outlook performance suffers.  In fact, outlook often does not close properly and the OST needs to be checked on startup.

If this much mail does need to be kept, I'd recommend some sort of Email Archiving solution so that they don't need to store all the mail locally.  This will improve performance of Exchange and Outlook and allow users to keep all their mail in their mailbox without having to archive to PST's.

There are all sorts of different solutions for this that vary from $1000 to tens of thousands based on the needs.

 

by: e_vanheelPosted on 2008-04-22 at 09:22:56ID: 21412713

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/932086 might have some good insight but does not specify a "max" size.  I believe that it is the store that is the limit.

 

by: ics45Posted on 2008-04-30 at 05:41:49ID: 21470127

Hi,
thank you both for the replies.
Does anyone have any experience of any email archiving solutions as indicated above?
many thanks,
Mike

 

by: ochimoPosted on 2008-09-08 at 08:51:47ID: 22418612

We currently use Enterprise Vault for our offline archive solution and it works quite well.

BTW in exchange 2003 the limit was 2 gigs but im not sure of the limit on 2007

 

by: zanedabrainPosted on 2008-12-25 at 10:56:42ID: 23243617

There is no limit on an OST, I have users with 20+ Gigs worth of mail, about 7 Gigs in thier .ost and multiple .PST's over the +5GB mark... but they do suffer a severe performance penalty (especially notebook users) for thier lack of mail clean up effort.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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