My company is looking to make some changes to the Exchange server: 1. Make PST files no longer available 2. Any Current PSTs that are created will not longer have access to them and the emails that are contained to it 3. A company size of 11,000+ all users will have a storage limit size of 1GB. After size is reached user will not be able to send, but however will be able to receive. 4. Email retention will only be 180 days. I feel as a System Admin that this is bad practice as the Exchange DB will become unstable and we should encourage our users to use PST not to store data on the server. I am looking to see if my gut feeling is right and if anyone can help me with any supporting information for me to see that this does not happen.

Hi I really don't like PSTs and I always try to move people away from using them but it depends on you security and legal retention requirements. The best solution would be to use an archiving system to store less important mail, but short of that adding more storage (increase the number of databases) and storing all email in a single location is much easier to manage than random PST files stored locally all over an organisation. Cheers, Steve

PSTs are evil things. As soon as you drop an email in to a PST you may as well kiss it goodbye in my opinion. If you need to retain the email for legal reasons then a PST file is not going to be enough, because they are so fragile. Furthermore they are impossible to back up and bloat. 100mb of email in Exchange can be 300mb of email in a PST. Exchange is designed to support large databases and is a lot better for it. I have sites with 400gb in a single database without an issue. You must have more than one server for that number of users, so having higher than 1gb allowances shouldn't be an issue. Storage is cheap and it is easier to manage it on Exchange. Storage is cheap. 11000 users at 1gb each, that is 11tb. That is just over double what I have at home. You are not going to see supporting documentation to support the use of PST files, just the complete opposite. Simon. Simon Butler, Exchange MVP Blog | Exchange Resources | In the UK? Hire Me.