I am running Exchange 2007 Enterprise on Windows Server 2003 R2 x64 Edition on a single server with 8Gb RAM. I have 80 users and one Information Store (112Gb). There is a hard limit for each mailbox of 7Gb and the current average size is 1.07Gb and the largest being 5.59Gb. My questions are as follows? 1) I have read in numerous locations that an OST file starts to affect desktop performance if it gets over 2Gb? 2) Should I be splitting up my Information Store? 3) I understand that Exchange 2010 has an Archiving feature but it only works with Office 2010. This may help me. Any advice would be nice. Thanks, DennisInterflex

1)Weve .OST Files which are well over 2GB and we dont have any speed problems. maybe if a system has a huge fragementation level, i would unterstand that this could create some speed problems. to make a long story short: imho 2GB or even 5-6GB .OST files are ok.2) splitting up the information store has it good sides. you could split up the store and move 50% of your users to store A and the other half to store B.so if one store gets somehow currupted, you could easily fix the problem and 50% of your users wouldnt take notice. BUT if you are setting rules for whole storages etc, you have more work with 2 stores...i assume that if you have the opportunity to split the stores, then also move the stores to 2 diffrent raid5 systems or other redundant systems, so you have also hardware security.

1. I have seen this happening couple of time but most of the time i have seen mail boxes with around 13-14 Gb running absolutely fine. probabaly all depends on the operations and number of search ops that you do on the mail folders.2. always recommended to have small databases. Reason is good managment, faster recovery and restore, operations like defrag will not take much of the time etc.3. see this for details http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/2010/en/us/Archiving-and-Retention.aspxRaj