Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

I'll never have to explain /3GB again...

Clive Watson's Weblog — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 14:53:36 GMT

...I Hope! Well done to the performance team for their recent Windows Server articles, in particular

Why are network stored PST files a bad idea?

You Had Me At EHLO... — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 21:55:15 GMT

Windows Server Performance Team started a blog not so long ago... and one of subjects they talked about...

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

JeremyinNC — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 22:11:39 GMT

Seems to me that most IT folks are at least dimly aware of this...but what's the option? Installing backup software on every workstation and dealing with open files? Not likely.

This is kind of an "eat your veggies our you'll get fat" message. Sure we all know it's true, but that's not going to make us give up ice cream.

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Daniel — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 00:07:01 GMT

Well, I think this is a good example of what email has become. Semi-useless and a hassle. Every company has distro lists that have all the employees and departments in it that they send announcements to. I can see that being the case a while back, but that kind of stuff needs to be posted to an intranet. Share a file with a coworker? Same thing or in a network share. Want to send a quick note? How about a IM, because that is quick.

You get a better sense if they got message as well, because they will most likely respond quickly or have a status message up. Use email for things like outside communications. That will keep the mailstore smaller. The only thing that might be bad is the mobile factor of chat, that is still limited, once that goes off it is seamless

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

James — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 02:11:48 GMT

Great writeup! I've ran into this a few times in my travels and knew it was bad and moved the files back to the local machine, but didn't really delve into the nuts and bolts of what was happening.

http://geekinparadise.wordpress.com/2007/04/03/why-you-dont-work-with-pst-files-on-the-network/

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Peter — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 09:24:02 GMT

I think this is a very valid concern from a performance point of view and I can see what it's not supported. Really useful article.

There also other operational reasons not to have PST files on network shares:

1.) Increase in storage requirements due to loss of Single Instance Storage, lower storage efficiency of PST files over the IS. All you are actually doing is moving the storage headache and not solving it.

2.) Open files on the server that you need to backup

3.) No access to PST file when no connected to the network server unless running offline mode which adds extra issue.

PST files should really only be used to store users personal e-mail and stuff they don't actually care about IMHO. There is still a lot of user education that needs to occur here.

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Dale — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 13:45:48 GMT

Whilst I'll admit this is a very valid argument and .pst's should not be on a network store, please suggest a viable alternative? Put it on the local machine, cool. Now how are you going to back it up? I completely agree with JeremyinNC.

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Critic the Cynic — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 14:52:16 GMT

Technically obvious? Yes.

Funtionally practical? Nope. Many keep their some of their most valued older content on pst. If the HD goes on C:\ (or accidential delete) there's virtually no recovery. Try managing that.

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Keith — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 18:16:45 GMT

Dale - surely you just backup your exchange storage instead? The PST file is just the local repository of this stuff anyway. The only issue you have then is of Auto-archived files.

The exact reason why you should not allow PST files on the network

shawnbass.com - Network Administration blog — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 23:36:59 GMT

I've always known that you're not supposed to use PST files across the network (LAN or WAN), but up until recently I did not have the specific proof as to the magnitude of problems it can cause (outsi ...

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

BillB — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 10:58:20 GMT

It must be nice to have a monopoly and live in a completely unregulated world. In the real world, where the rest of us live, email is, in some cases, both required to be backed up and discoverable in litigation.

It like going to your doctor and saying, "it hurts when I breathe." Your doctor says, "don't breathe then."

You Muppets!!! FIX THE PROBLEM!

Weekend reading

subject: exchange — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 18:46:36 GMT

Securing RPC Over HTTP Using ISA Server 2006 Survey Reveals Widespread Inadequacies in Email Outage Prevention

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

absoblogginlutely — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 20:40:27 GMT

At least I now know the technical reasons why it shouldn't be done - i had figured out the bandwidth requirements but it's useful for the technical information.

@keith - no, the pst is not a copy of the mail in the information store - pst's are mail that has been removed from the server and stored locally. OST files are copies of the mail on the server (and this can be recreated if lost)

However, alternative solutions would be nice. For a company that is concerned with keeping down the size of the mailstore due to the time to backup and disk space AND the fact that there is an archive function, it is natural to set users up to archive mail to the c drive and by default, to the worst possible place - hidden away in documents and settings. Not only is it buried deep within a folder structure, any corruption/recreation of the profile means the email is deleted.

The fact that users want a backup of their data in case the hard disk dies, also ensures that email is stored on a network drive - MS say this isn't recommended, but the alternatives of purchasing backup software for every desktop in an enterprise (and maintaining this) is just not practical or cost effective.

@Peter - yes, archiving off personal emails and stuff they don't care is great but users just don't do that either because it's too complicated or they can't be bothered.

As a user - i see disk space as being cheap and therefore no reason to archive mail off - especially as google gives me 2gb of data - why should my IT dept be so mean to only give me 300mb? (OR worse - why don't I just forward my mail to gmail to let them store it all)

As a tech - yes disk space is cheap, but the time taken to backup or restore, or the tape capacity size is just too great to allow more than 300mb per user (for typical largish companies)

One of the possible solutions is to use the pstbackup addin from microsoft at http://tinyurl.com/4s68u which takes a backup copy of pst files to somewhere else on the network for recovery purposes. This worked in 2003/xp but not sure if it works in 2007.

It would be nice if this could be deployed as a policy (or built into outlook) with the autoarchive set to archive to a different location not in the user profile and then have the pstbackup routine dump to a network share that does not get backed up (but that doesn't help for dr purposes if the entire site burns down and no backup has been taken of archived mail)

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Marcin Gondek — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 23:00:56 GMT

One of resosultion is use IMAP4 instead POP3 then all mail can be stored on server, even workstation disk will be dowb.

Cosas Interesantes 09/04/2007

Be Geek My Friend — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 20:18:56 GMT

Hoy en cosas interesantes: El video de Bill Gates que aun no habias visto, 25 Videos de SCOM 2007 para

Ask the Performance Team Blog

Carpe Diem: Flaphead.com @ Home — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 20:59:39 GMT

No sure how I found this blog but its damm good. Check out these that I have been reading today! IE7

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Umesh Shrivastava — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 09:55:29 GMT

Looking at the performance point of view yes the article is very good for the network administrator to peep in their network.

But looking at the backup of pst point of view due to lack of centralised database this become a critical issue.

Looking forward to here some expert comment/article on this.

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Aaron — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 18:13:49 GMT

I know that the article mentions PerfMon and Poolmon counters that can help identify this problem. I possibly have this problem and am trying to rule it in or out.

We have about 1000 PSTs on a Win 2003 SP1 file server using external scsi attached storage for about 1.6TB of Users storage areas.

Could someone be more specific in describing what to look for. The Available Work Items (AWI) hitting zero is easy to watch for but Poolmon is a little less friendly. I am watching LSwn Allocs grow from 8261 to 8409 over an hour period. So, yes, it is growing but is that a bad number or rate? MmSt is also growing, 13,305,470 to 13,360,177 over the same time period. AWI has been pretty stead at around 20-30, but seems to only be affecting processor zero. The other three processors are basically flat at 25. We see occasional dips in AWI to zero. Also, after one particular spike to zero, AWI seems to have upped the number of Available Items and is now hovering around 65 instead of 30.

Any input or links to documents that will help more thoroughly identify this problem will be much appreciated.

Aaron

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Joe — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 20:51:30 GMT

To answer some of the comments about people needing to archive their mail to keep the ex store down in size, I would ask why?

What's the point in limiting people's mailbox size and then having them archive off to a network store somewhere? You still have to backup that network store and those disks are still costing you money. If backing up the store takes too long then you probably need to consider breaking your server up into multiple storage groups and backup one group in the evening 8:00pm, and the other in the early morning 2:00am or something like that. If you still have problems then you should be looking at getting a faster tape drive or doing disk based backups and then backing up to tape from the disk backup so that your tape backups can have all day to run if they need to.

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Grant Scheffert — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 07:02:47 GMT

I agree with Joe. Keep it in the Exchange IS database. You get the single instance storage benefit, and you still have to back it up anyway. With Exchange 2000 Standard, you had the 16GB limit, but since Exchange 2003 SP2 and Exchange 2007, the size restrictions are much higher. And the peformance storing in the IS is much better than PST's too.

Give me the reasons that this is bad logic?

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Bob — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 23:49:37 GMT

This is all well and good when you don't have an IT policy sending you in the opposite direction.

Leaving things on the server is the way to go for a shared inbox. But if you have unreasonable storage limitations on the server, you've got to put the mail somewhere. If you can't put it in a PST file on a file server, what can you do? Distribute a weekly DVD backup of the PST file for everyone to copy locally?

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Dave — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 20:06:20 GMT

Lots of good comments. I would be interested to see what some of the answers are. Our organization is having this same discussion right now and we would like to know how others are handling it.

We either have to come up with an expensive archival solution or raise the mailbox limits. It just seems that every time we set a standard we are just moving the problem somewhere else.

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Helmut Hauser — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 13:30:16 GMT

A new KB is out to fix the event id 2020

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/933998/en-us

But as said, avoid PST Files over Network

We see issues on file clusters if terminal server user profiles contains pst files - even Outlook (on TS) struggles

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Jamie — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 12:24:06 GMT

I've seen lots of comments above talking about how in the real world i'ts not pratical to remove PST files from servers.

I strongly disagree. There are many products out there designed to archive exchange mail. Enterprise Vault and EAS to name two. Both these products will store archive mail in a central, compressed location where it can be easily backed up thus removing the load from your file servers.

If you don't have the budget for these tools then as someone else said leave it all in exchange. The disk space you save on your file servers you can add to exchange and you'll need less disk this way.

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Yumi — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 20:19:22 GMT

So leave the mail on the server: Go IMAP, use a web-based client (e.g., Google), cut down on the distro lists, increase mailbox size... Take all the incentives out of wanting to keep mail anyplace but the server.

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Airdesk — Fri, 04 May 2007 08:25:21 GMT

Excellent article. One of the best technical explanations I have read. It is worth noting that the Lotus Notes local mail store has the same characteristics.

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

dgeddes — Fri, 11 May 2007 01:18:15 GMT

KB Article 297019 provides recommendations for alternatives to .pst files. In the end, the recommendation is to stop using .pst files altogether.

I file PST di Outlook non supportano il salvataggio in cartelle di rete

Simone Carletti's Blog — Thu, 17 May 2007 00:08:30 GMT

Se state pensando di salvare il file .pst in una cartella condivisa per ottimizzare tempi e risorse... non fatelo!

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Matt — Fri, 18 May 2007 17:16:44 GMT

If you have 50000 users and a federal requirement of keeping emails for no less than 3 years, you cant store them on the exchange server. I have 3 pst's (2 archives and one working) that i have to store on a network server as backup software on a client is prohibitively expensive and the workstation is nothing more than a beefed up terminal. storing pst's in the users home directory is the only way to guarentee backups. PFBackup from Microsoft is good, but will only run once a day. if it could be configured to run everytime you close outlook, we would do it.

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

CC Hameed — Sun, 20 May 2007 22:59:19 GMT

Matt - you are forgetting the other option - implementing a vaulting solution. Many organizations absolutely block PST files from being created on their servers and use a vaulting solution instead. This gives them the flexibility to maintain their archive, enforce document retention policy, keep the live mailboxes small(er) AND stay in a supported configuration.

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Dale — Wed, 23 May 2007 16:03:34 GMT

Well for me personally I've got no other option but to have the .pst's stored on the file server. We DONT run Exchange so therefore we cannot revert to the IS, etc nor auto-archive using Enterprise Vault. As our users tend to keep lots of mail (user education doesn't work here) I have to deal with hundreds of 1.5GB+ .pst's. We tried PFBackup but when 5 o'clock comes and everyone starts backing up to the network share the LAN came to a crawl.

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Perry — Wed, 23 May 2007 18:27:13 GMT

If I use Exchange2003 and use .PST files just to archive old emails out of my Exchnage DB is this OK? We have to find a way to get this accomplished so we can reduce the size of the Exchange DB. Any thoughts?

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Dave Dillon — Thu, 31 May 2007 13:23:12 GMT

I'm looking for information on how to actaually prove that pst file are causing problems on our file servers. I'm seeing available work items running on average between 3-10 (I think this is very low) across all processors at times on our file servers. I'm also seeing the listed pooltags using up chunks of page and nonpaged pool memory.

Can anybody help?

Dave

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

stonedancer — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 17:13:03 GMT

Oh my god. I thought our company was a bit poor but I really feel for some of you guys. You need the right equipment for the job and you need to let the people with the money in your organisation know this rather than finding imperfect work-arrounds.

As far as I've read PST files are NOT for corporate use. They are a "Personal" store. If you are in a business with a network environment you need to be running a mail server or in the case of larger organisations like Matt several mail servers.

You could have 300mb mailboxes for your 50000 users and still keep all old data. If you have a good backup rotation with in an hour you should be able to retrieve any age of email be it for leagal reasons or just curiosity.

We use Backup exec with the Exchange Agent and have tapes that run:

Daily backups=Mon-Thur (4 tape rotation)

Weekly=Friday (12 tape rotation)

Quarterly=Friday (3 tape rotation)

Yearly=Friday (Run at year end and tape kept indefinitly)

You can take copies of your yearlies just to be safe. Of course these should be kept in fire proof safes.

Using this method you can tell people to delete anything over a year old an you will Always have a copy. In reality we tell users to delete items over 3 years and we also have a sending restriction in place when the user reaches their mailbox limit.

I used to block .pst creation in Outlook 2000 but now I'm looking for a reg edit/policy to stop all PST files in Outlook 2003. Can anyone help with this?

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Lor — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 16:57:34 GMT

Supposing you did implement a vaulting solution, what are you going to do with 5000+ users PST files?

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Pete — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 00:35:26 GMT

What about using a seperate array to store just the PSTs on ?

I agree the PSTs shouldn't be there , but if we have them we need to work with them - no good trying to push the data back into the Exchange Store.

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Alister Waller — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 05:48:19 GMT

Rather than just say don't use them etc..the link here provides a great alternative. Its uses a combination of saving emails to normal windows folders and using windows desktop search to find anything you require. very easy, very quick, its even quicker to find that pesky email than through outlook find.

You need to make it easy for users or they won't do it.

cheers

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Alister Waller — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 05:54:11 GMT

You need to make it easy for users or they won't do it.

http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10877-6176378.html

cheers

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Loren Eslinger — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 19:34:29 GMT

Here's how to get it to work.

First of all by Default users should NOT have email configure to deliver directly to the PST. That is very misleading in the article, and is given as the primary justification for the performance problems associated with PSTs on file servers. Do away with that BAD practice first.

Secondly, do away with the bad practice that users will can access their PSTs over a WAN. This is just another bad practice and poor reasoning in the article for performance issues. Of course it will be slow and cause performance issues....so DON't DO IT.

Thridly, i disagree with the general assertion that the performance problems can't be over come or "tweaked" as the article puts it. They can be overcome...cause i have done it in a 2000 user environement on a single server. Then i upgraded to an 3 node file server cluster with DFS running in front to balance the load behind. MS has an article on this.

Forthly, invest in good hardware. For my 2000+ users i am using a SAN and high end servers. For each environment you need to size accordingly, but in generall get the MOST CACHE on the RAID controller you can or use a SAN.

Finally, learn everything you can about pagedpool, nonpagepool, sizereqbuf, and systempages setting for memory and other setting in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management]. Particularly, read up on PoolUsageMaximum setting to help with trimming the Pagedpool before it fills up. See Microsoft KB Articles Q304101, Q312362, Q313707.

Here is a selection of notes i have on common issues regarding the errors associated with PST and other File server issues.

;When you access shares on a computer running Windows NT/2000/2003 Server from a Windows NT/2000/XP client you may experience some of these errors:

;1) Error Message: "Not enough server storage is available to process this command." is displayed during an access attempt.

; Cause: The IRPstackSize parameter is set too low on the server

; See MS KB Articles Q225782

;2) Event ID 2022, Source SVR: The server was unable to find a free connection XXX times in the last 60 seconds. This indicates a spike in network traffic. If this is happening frequently, you should consider increasing the minimum number of free connections to add headroom. To do that, modify the MinFreeConnections and MaxFreeConnections for the LanmanServer in the registry. This message is logged in the system event log.

; Cause: You had a spike in user access that used all the Free Server connections allocated via the "MinFreeConnections" and "MaxFreeConnections" settings.

; See MS KB Articles Q909262, Q830901, Q317249, and Q245080

;3) Event ID 2021, Source: Srv: The server was unable to create a work item %2 times in the last %3 seconds.

; Cause: The Error is commonly logged when there is accumulation of work items in the server service. This is normally associated with disk throughput issues, but can be related to other things like virus scanning or other processes that prevent the system from keeping up with the requests.

;See MS KB Articles Q317249

Other References: Q271148, Q810886

Finally consider setting the NTFSMemory usage to 2...via FSUtil.exe

Thanks

Loren Eslinger, MCSE

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Calvin — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 17:40:29 GMT

Hi There,

just wanted to say thanks for the excellent article and the brilliant comments - great aggregation of info on this topic!

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Sean — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 17:15:11 GMT

I agree with Loren, but in the aspect of tweaking servers to assit in alleviating the issue, you never bandade with tweaks. The bottom line is Networked PST's are shunned from the start.

There are two viable solutions for this, one make all of your users store PST's for thier email locally and use a schedule task to shutdown exchange and copy the pst to the nnetwork drive for ARCHIVAL purposes.

Second, which would be highly recommended for over 500 or so users is to invest in an Email archiving solution, this situation is exactly why they were designed. There are many low end stand alone versions and even some high end versions that will streamline right into SAP and the like.

doing one of the above will save you a lot of time and headache and the most important part is design the network to scale and grown with the needs of the company, be proactive not reactive.

Sean Davis

MCP, A+, Network+, Server+, Security+

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Matt Webb — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 15:36:38 GMT

I have 60 m/b of allocated storage on my mailbox. I have been at my company for 9 years (yes, time to move on!!!). I autoarchive any message older than 20 days to a PST file on the network. My PST is now over 1 gig. No way my mail admins will allow a 1 gig mailbox. Maybe I need to start using Windows backup...???

The big problem is, at least in the company I work for, is that filling up the network storage drives for personal folders isn't a big deal to the business. Filling up our Exchange server to the point of collaspe would be a critical problem, hence our Exchange servers have much stricter policies surrounding allocated storage limits.

I'll have to look into the idea of a vault.

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

David Sune — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 08:59:16 GMT

As much as we'd all like to pretend that Exchange is there for only sending/receiving email the reality is that it has become a users filing system for all their data. PST's are the cheap easy solution for managing this but for all mentioned reasons above is a very poor choice. An archiving solution is by far the way to go but they are very costly and hard to justify. Best thign to do is to do a seach for all PST's on the network and show the disk saving by getting rid of them. Add that to a reduction of network traffic and the file system hangs as mentioned in this article and you should end up with a pretty solid business case.

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Marcel — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 14:07:13 GMT

I'm curious, does anyone know if a file server running 64-bit Windows will alleviate the problems caused by PST files on a file share?

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Scott — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 18:51:36 GMT

Does anyone have a method or know of one to determine the number of users on your network that have their PSTs setup on network shares? We are trying to determine how many users are already doing this.

.pst stored on server - unique setup - but problem with credentials

Curt Coleman — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 20:39:58 GMT

I have multiple users using multiple XP workstations from a single login. I dont want multiple logins on these machines for a variety of reasons. I have Outlook 2003 on each workstation set to prompt for username. The users .pst files are stored in their password-protected home folder on the server. I also have a public drive with commonly used docs located on the server. My problem is that the credentials supplied for each user when accessing their email conflicts with the credentials used for the public drive. The public drive and the home folders are all physically on the same Windows2000 server. I have read that you cannot use different credentials on the same machine. The result is the account for the public drive gets locked out. Because of out policies, we will continue to store .pst's on the network, but can anyone recommend a solution for the credentials issue. I apologize if this isn’t posted in the appropriate location. Thanks. My email is curt.coleman@gmail.com

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

JaredK — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 23:04:51 GMT

GFI mail archiver is a great solution to be able to have mailbox quotas and also have a place to retrieve old emails.

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Randy — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 00:34:27 GMT

Is there a perfmon counter or other place to look to see the NTFS lock that you say is being enforced while the PST file is grown?

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Merril — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 00:52:09 GMT

Great article, explained alot I needed to know for a current situation.

I work at an accounting firm where the opposite is true of what most people here are saying. We cannot legally keep email for over 3 years and our corporate hq is starting a policy allowing only data from the last 9 months to be available. Now we will be using ost and must make sure there are no .pst's people are hiding.

As refered to previously, outlook has become a filing cabinet for many users and even for my division-instructions on updating software is retained in our archived folders.

I'm looking for a way to export these important files from the pst's and manage them in another organizer-like-system that may be accessed and stored localy.

If anyone knows of the best way to get this done, or if its not plausible, I would appreciate the help.

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Random visitor — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 15:12:59 GMT

Although the issue of PST-files is not new to me, I'm really amazed about the amount of people that still try/want to use PST-files (or other storage types) other than IS.

Ony recently of the our customers filed an RFC for an increase in the users' homedrive since there were a lot of PST-files and rapidly growing. After a good debate, our customer decided to abandon all PST-files on the spot. All was migrated back into IS and PST was "disabled" from the IT-environment.

It's not about the users or their habit of storing crap all over the network. It's all about cost vs. performance and a good Exchange-environment is cheaper, leaner and meaner than a segregated Exchange & PST environment.

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Christian — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 12:28:49 GMT

Thanks for this article.

We have the same problem in our company and I searched for the answer now over month.

I think the only solution to this problem is to prevent creating pst-files and install a Archive-Software like GFIMailArchiver.

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Rolando — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 01:27:47 GMT

I was having the same problems as many of you. I have found that Storing the pst files on a different file format(ext3) and OS (linux) instead of NTFS solved my problems. ext3 file system francments too but not as much as long as your have free space 5% plus.

I also can backup the open files with this file system using a tar. This is possible because in Linux-Samba i can dissable the oplock of the client.

I still have about 30% of my users running on a share on Windows2003 and the performance is slower than my Linux box

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Dave — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 18:14:44 GMT

Although I have always known there can be issues with using PST files over a network our users only use PST files to archive old mail for CYA reasons. They are all stored in there home folders on the file server.

And yes I have some that are almost 3GB and many that average 500MB to 1GB. I also have users that have 20 -30 of them.

All Outlook 2003 clients are in cache mode.

The file servers we use are are 2600 and 2900 series Dell servers some with SAS attched Raid5 Arrays.

The Exchange servers are in a remote site so all communication to Exchange is over WAN link.

I have never seen this issue or event ids mentioned here on our file servers and we use a 10BaseT and Wireless B LAN infrastructure for the user community in a million + square foot facility with about 500 users.

I also work with 8 other large facilitys with similar comfigurations and never seen these issues at those locations either.

I think its all about how clean and maintained you keep your infrastructure.

I would never implement using PST files over a WAN though.

Dave

CCNA, MCSE, MCSA, Security+, Network+, A+

Suggest Option #1, 2 and 3 then!

Peteski — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 01:59:42 GMT

As others have said, this is like a parent child conversation that goes nowhere. I've not yet run across anyone that argues *for* PST files, anywhere.

My Rant is that Exchange Team should have engineered log shipping and local file system HSM access to attachments ages ago. I understand they're busy, but get your priorities straight. Not only that, but if MS at least made archiving a priced option or part of "enterprise" Exchange, god forbid you might actually make some money off of a feature that should have been in the product in the first place.

It's not just pathetic 3rd party ISVs that write databases programs with no archive strategy!

Rant said, thanks for at least breaking it down from the platform side so I can use it as ammo to beg for money to buy a proper archiving product for my bloated exchange server.

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Alexandre Grigoriev — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 02:14:26 GMT

Isn't that a lame excuse for a problem?

A bug should be titled like:

Windows "takes a dump" when too many file IOs are initiated by clients over a slow link. Not just because these are .PST files. .PST does have nothing to do with that.

The problem happens because the server's filesystem supplies data much faster than it can be sent back over the slow links. Thus, a lot of buffers are allocated to keep data and responses being sent back. This may cause pool exaustion. Sorry, a real system has to handle that gracefully, without inventing "unsupported configuration" excuses. Again, it's not caused by specifically .PST on WAN. It's caused by any high volume of file access over WAN.

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Richard Lloyds — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 07:14:00 GMT

Is this issue applicable to MS Home Server where I am backing up just 2 computers over my LAN?

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Dean — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 20:26:27 GMT

Wow. Let me be the first to say that most of us do not have the luxury of asking for and expecting funds to magically appear. There are things called budgets and planned capital expenditure. Some of us unlucky schmoes (I'm sure there are lots of us out there and not just me) have to grovel for a mere pittance of an IT budget. Our IT department is often told make do with what you have and oh if anything fails or breaks make damn sure you put in the extra 10-20 hours to "fix" it. And don't tell me I can just quit and find a new job either. Some of us have families to support and children to feed.

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

SANDY K — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 09:38:06 GMT

Can anyone give me simple steps on how to move my saved emails to a disc and out of my computer?

thank you

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Margaret — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 15:35:48 GMT

So.... are there any known issues with all Exchange users using pfbackup to provide a backup copy of their local pst files to a network share? This assumes that the backup PST file on the server is not directly accessed from within Outlook.

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Margaret — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 15:35:51 GMT

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Mark Latham — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 18:14:38 GMT

Can someone please tell me how to recover the Network PST's and put them back on the local HD?

We want to take approx. 20 users network PST's and put them back on their laptops and use the PST backup utility but I want to do it right.

Thanks!!

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Mark Latham — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 20:21:18 GMT

Sandy,

For your e-mail move to disk, see:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/HA010875321033.aspx

The Personal Folders Backup tool is designed for use in Outlook 2002 and later and the operating systems that support each respective Outlook version. The tool provides a quick and easy way to back up the Outlook information of your choice to your hard disk or network server or share.

After you back up your information, you can copy these duplicates of your Outlook data to a removable media such as a CD or DVD. The backup files are exact copies of the original files and are saved in the same file format. You can receive periodic reminders to back up your files.

The PST backup tool is at the link above.

Mark

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Casper — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 17:48:02 GMT

My question is how did the people who "have known this all along" learn it? This post only came out a year ago, and we've been putting our client's PST files on their network share for close to 5 years. We did/have done it because there is a severe quota limit on the Exchange server, and we have no sway (let alone control) over its configuration - only the file/print servers.

How could we have know this was a bad idea early enough to not only not not recommend it, but prevent users from doing it themselves? Are we the only server administrators who don't go perusing through random KB articles in our "free time", but rather tend to wait until a problem arises to search for this stuff?

If PSTs on the network is so bad, why does MS allow it? They prevented OE local folders from residing on the network with version 6, why didn't they do that with Outlook? At the very least, they could have popped up a warning about it.

I have to agree with Alexandre here. How would the server problem be any different if a large number of Access databases residing on a network share were being worked on at the same time? Why is it that we can't increase the Paged Pool memory? Our server processor load never goes above 15%, so our problem seems solely in this rather artificial limit.

We have users who need access to their "local" mail files from multiple machines in different locations (not at the same time), so truly local (C: drive) PST files aren't really feasible. As I said above, we CAN'T increase their Exchange quota.

Do any of the know-it-alls here have a realistic solution for our situation?

Even without much knowledge/experience in it, we're considering trying to set up an IMAP server that is only for online storage and is restricted in sending/receiving mail. Every user would need to then have another account, but many of our problems would go away (maybe to be replaced with others?). Does anyone have any comments on this idea??

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

CC Hameed — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 19:26:24 GMT

Casper - although the post on our blog is only a year old, the original KB (297019) has been public since 2001. The article has been updated over time to include the newer versions of Outlook as they have been released. The PST files were created back in 1990 by the Exchange Server 4.0 team with the intent of letting a person store a copy of messages on their local machine. They also serve as a local message store for users who do not have access to an Exchange server - for example those who configure Outlook as their ISP Mail client.

With respect to the situation that you are running into - a vaulting solution or other sort of archival solution would seem to be a good solution as you indicate that there is a "severe quota limit" on the Exchange server. Being able to access that archive from a web browser addresses the issue of being able to get to the mail from any machine that can access that site and more importantly it allows the administrators to centrally manage and adhere to email & document retention policies.

- CC

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Dave Green — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 17:33:50 GMT

One simple solution that is now possible from datamills is to locate for each user the PST file on his/her workstation without losing central control.

Placing the PST on users’ notebooks/desktops reduces the daily network traffic and server load dramatically, as there is no need for Outlook to open and search PSTs across the network.

Then for corporate backup/archive it is possible to use the new PST2PST incremental backup/archive (http://www.datamills.com) to incrementally store new mail onto central organization storage.

This is also a great solution for traveling users, or for disaster situations as users have all their mail data on their notebook regardless of Exchange.

Dave Green

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Mladen Persic — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 17:51:16 GMT

After all these posts and one year of commenting, can anyone tell me this:

(15 computers use Outlook .pst files, each over 4GB; Network is Ethernet 100MB/s)

Is this safe to move .pst files to some Linux file server? I am not asking for 100% safety! It is not possible after all. And will that slow down network little or much?

So: Yes or No?

Thanx a lot for ur answers.

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Brian Cross — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 18:04:31 GMT

One word: Sharepoint.

Sharepoint requires a PST file be used for access via Outlook. Why would Microsoft use PST with a Sharepoint implementation that's supposed to be used over a LAN/WAN situation is beyond me. After reading all the information here, I'll have to move the PST files to my Terminal Server, because I can't get to Sharepoint without using PST in Outlook.

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Antonio Brito — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 19:42:19 GMT

I found the solution. During more than 6 years I used files .PST in a volume Novell Netware and I never had problems. On this year we decided to migrate for Microsoft File Server and.... @ #$% ¨&¨ $ Therefore the solution is to put PSTs in one File server Novell.

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Perston Yu — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 22:20:58 GMT

Malden,

For 15 users with 4GB you are looking at slow performance for both Outlook and network.

It makes much more sense to leave the PSTs on the desktops and to look for "incremental PST backup" software to daily backup the PSTs onto the Linux server.

I guess that your daily changes are less than 40MB which is 0.1% of the 4GB PST, meaning with PSTs on the desktops and incremental PST backup you can expect your network to operate smoothly even if your PSTs and number of user grows x100 over.

Preston

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

McWoo — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 19:57:29 GMT

I just started working with the PST files, and it keep saying that its not a Win32 application. Why do I do?

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Paul Mead — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 15:42:34 GMT

Surely Cached mode (.OST) would resolve the network load issue as I presume that cached mode would predominantly work with changes and not the whole pst file? I guess that this may be why cached mode was introduced?

Indeed some of the searching facilities need you to be in cached mode; cached mode also allows you to take public folder information offline for laptops users too (great!). (Need to add a favourites link to the public folders you want to have access to offline).

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Dong Miller — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 20:46:22 GMT

Unlike PST, OST is not a solution to solve email storage space. It's merely a solution to synchronize a local storage with mailbox. And if the mailbox is limited in size so is the OST.

PST is still the only viable solution that scales very well for enterprise. With Outlook 2003, each PST can be virtually unlimited in size (unlike Outlook 2000 with 2GB limit, the limit is virtual at several terra bytes). Keeping PSTs on desktop is the key to speed and scalability. No other solution can give this kind of scalability and agility.

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Marlon — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 21:31:19 GMT

Is there still apossibillity to open pst files if located on a local network (LAN) or WAN net work

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Alex Krenvalk — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 14:37:09 GMT

For recover pst file-<a href="http://www.recoverytoolbox.com/pst_viewer.html">pst viewer</a>,All of your contacts, mails, messages, tasks and calendars are stored on mail server and there's no way to extract it offline,will help you to restore your data from files with *.pst and *.ost extension,tool will work under all supported versions of Microsoft Windows operating system, as well as with Microsoft Outlook,pst viewer can retrieve all contents as a number of files in *.vcf, *.txt and *.eml formats.

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Jack Handy — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 03:40:04 GMT

Once someone implement a company wide .pst solution across the network it's uncanny how the implementation can turn your IT operations department upside down and riddle it with fallout ranging from backup, rdp, and overall visibility issues that are totally unsolvable. If you can prevent .pst files from being saved and update across the network it would be your best bet in maintaining your department’s sanity. One such solution offered up to us was to get a GPO in place to prevent .pst from being saved on network shares.

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

William — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 16:50:12 GMT

We have this same issue right now, but without any of the event ID's. We just migrated a new server to replace and old one that we had and since then we've been having issues with users and large PST files. It's weird becuase on the old server there were no issues.

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Ronan — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 16:10:55 GMT

Is there n outlook plugin that simulates a personal folder but stores the files on a flat file system.

Also is the above stated problem going to be an issue with large database files Access(1 or 2 gb) or large powerpoint files (few hundred mb) etc etc. As Im experiencing painful slowdows and this problem with PST seems to be right on the money

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Ronan — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 16:11:06 GMT

Is there n outlook plugin that simulates a personal folder but stores the files on a flat file system.

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

George P. White — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 21:41:57 GMT

I have Outlook Calendar on two machines, I want them to be together. Also my contacts in Outlook need to be the same on both machines. In XP I could find my Outlook.pst, copy it from one machine and paste it into the other machine with a flash drive.

I now have a Vista machine and Outlook 2007 and I can't find my Outlook. pst file so I can transfere it to the second machine.

What do I do?

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Amit — Wed, 07 May 2008 14:29:47 GMT

try this...

CopySharp V1.0 is a GUI tool for copying open/in process files.

It is inspired by robocopy and vshadow.

CopySharp V1.0 requires Microsoft® Windows® Server 2003, Microsoft® Windows® XP

I have lots of issues posted over net regarding copying/renaming/moving of files fails due to the no of reasons like file is in process or opened by some application etc.

For example:

On going to the location of the .pst file, I can rename, but not copy or move. "Error 0x80070021: The process cannot access the file because another process has locked a portion of the file."

There are no processes using this file as I have tried to access the same file from another computer to the network drive. I have also tried to use "unlocking" tools which say the file is not locked by any process.

CopySharp addresses the same issue. And can easily copy the same kind of files.

Locate it at: www.amitchaudhary.com

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Steve — Sun, 11 May 2008 12:13:05 GMT

The only viable solution which we could find for our 5,000 email users is to move PST files to the users' machines.

This freed 7.5TB of first class storage, reduced BW utilization, and increased Outlook speed (dramatically for our branch office users). Then for central retention we use PST2PST that works incrementally and able to backup open PST file.

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Mike Reubens — Tue, 13 May 2008 17:50:02 GMT

Interesting Blogg...

I'm currently working on a project to archive all old email data both in PST files and in the Exchange Mailstore using Zantaz EAS. We have been doing this for over 1 year now and we are close to the end.

The software comes with tools to automatically suck PST data back into the mailbox in it's present folder structure, stub it so that users can just double click on the stub\shortcut in Outlook to view an archived mail, and archive it to a dedicated archive. Although it is very expensive we managed to convince the business that we needed this badly for the 4000+ users otherwise we were going into email meltdown.

In my opinion PSTs are the devil incarnate, they have caused a huge amount of problems over the years and we are moving towards seeing the back of them forever. I urge any cmpany with funds to look at a corporate email archiving solution. It will save you server space, remove corrupt PST management from your helpdesk and allow users to work seemlessly without restriction.

By the way, the PSt backup tool causes as many issues as it relieves by creating many copies of PST files with (Vx) at the end. I have found home directories with over 15gb of PST data which were all duplicates. A nightmare to be honest as servers creaked with the load.

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Lycan — Mon, 26 May 2008 12:28:30 GMT

Evault from symantec is also an option.

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Martin Green — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 17:41:37 GMT

Email Archiving seems like a great idea. Does anyone have an idea of how to implement, when we are a just an OU within a much larger company? We maintain our own file and print servers, even our own sql server (for now) but email is ENTERPRISE and thus we have no rights to exchange other than user rights.

So until the ENTERPRISE decided to implement an archiving solution, what can I do to prvent pst proliferation? My users need (CYA) to save emails. I need to control psts (I have users with 4-10 psts @ 3+ GB each).

Any ideas?

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Wes — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 21:15:16 GMT

We have the same issue on our file server (it hosts approx 100 gigs of PST files) but ONLY when I try to use Shadow Copies... We are going to experiment with moving all the PST's to a separate volume on the same server (using linkd) and see if this resolves the issue.

With Shadow copies turned off, we have not run into any issues so far...

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

John Hughes — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 23:50:50 GMT

For years I have lived with Outlook Express at home, and wished I had a way to download my email to a common place. The solution was to only run Outlook Express on one computer, and use a web based client to check email when that computer was being used by someone else in the household. When installing Office 2007 broke Outlook Express, I thought I might as well move to Outlook. I thought that I could put the PST file on a network drive, configure my Outlook on each of the machines on my home network to point to the same file, and then I would finally solve the problem of needing to read and or send email when my wife was busy on the computer that housed my email. I realize this is not optimum for performance, but it is a small home network with less than 6 computers on line at any one time. For such a small network, I can't afford the costs associated with setting up an Exchange server.

Does anyone see any issues with operating this way, given that it is such a small network?

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Paul Lawson — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 15:55:01 GMT

We find the new Outlook 2003 PSTs to be extremely robust and do not have the 2GB limit of Outlook 2000 PSTs (according to Microsoft can get as big as 20GB).

We have just tested a backup of a 10GB PST! It run over a WAN connection (256Kb) from our remote office in Ireland to our NY HQ. We allowed a 6 hour backup window using EdgeSafe for the backup; it took a week or so to complete pausing and starting automatically, but then the incremental updated take few minutes every day.

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

R George — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 17:09:12 GMT

Hi all,

As many others on this forum, I have recently run into the evil posed by networked PSTs. While I appreciate the fact that a corporate email archiving solution is probably the best way forward, I require to do something asap prior to transition.

The article mentions "Is there any server-side tweaking that can be done to mitigate some of these effects? Yes" - Could someone please elaborate?

The setup as we have consists of six volumes, with number of PST files and total PSTs size as follows:

V01 411 32GB

V02 1106 80GB

V03 839 123GB

V04 751 106Gb

V05 552 71GB

V06 254 44GB

Our disks have quite fluctuating levels of activity, with levels in excess of 80% processor time being reached quite frequently.

Can anyone please suggest some sort of temporary solution to alleviate the pain, before we are able to move to an archiving solution.

Thanks in advance,

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Brad H. — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 16:42:56 GMT

With 15 offices spread world wide, we tried to consolidate Exchange servers into the main branches in 3 continents, each server had plenty of space and might to support very big mailboxes.

The problem, however, was the extremely sloooow access speed of branch office users. Sometimes it took 30-60 seconds to open a remote mail. We looked into archiving solution, but it was way too expensive to implement/train, and far too complicated to manage over 15 sites.

After 12 months of implementation, and a small fortune spent on inflated facilities, we reverted back to PST files for speed and scalability. This time we place the PST files on user's workstations, with incremental backup solution for central governance.

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Steve R. — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 20:32:53 GMT

Ignorance is bliss, I guess. I have a Windows 2000 SP-4 sever running on an eight-year-old Compaq ProLiant ML321 with 512MB of RAM and six hard drives (three standalone and the other three in an array). I have used PST files on it for almost all of it's eight years without a single performance issue.

I migrated a few PST files onto the server years ago to save space on our Exchange 5.0 server and added new ones as we hired new staff members. I continued using the PST files after we replaced our Exchange 5.0 server with a v2003 server.

As of last week, we had about 40 PST files acting as the primary mailbox for the users and the server was one of the fastest in our company. Always on and never a delay sending info across the network.

I learned the PST file performance lesson the hard way last week when I migrated all our data files including the PST files to a Windows 2003 server and all hell broke loose. I spent two days trying to track down the problem oblivious to the PST issue until I talked to enough techies that one at Dell finally told me to get the PST files to the users' C: drives which solved the problem.

This move would have happened sooner than later as we were running out of storage space on the ProLiant. I just wish I had gotten clued in on this PST issue before the migration but when it works as long as it did, there's no reason to think it won't when you move it to a newer server.

Steve

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 14:33:25 GMT

MS!, how you can simply mess up all the companies' way of work by ignoring this problem.

There is several very banal solutions, like increment pst files in choosen size (f.e. 10MB), not all the time, or simply implement regular incremental backup solution to outlook client, where network place can be specified. (idealy also retrieved from exchange)

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

GBray — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 01:19:56 GMT

What affect, if any, does running the server which hosts WAN/LAN psts under VMware have on the poolmon and perfmon counters you recommend monitoring? Thanks.

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Fdav — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 17:30:18 GMT

We just implemented a much simpler email archive solution that does not require stubbing. We tried to implement Enterprise vault but it would have taken months. we went with a solution from Privacy Networks.

It works great and was up and running in a few hours.

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

HOme USer — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 05:42:35 GMT

what about ona home network? I dont have all the issues discussed here. I just want to be able to access my outlook email (no exchange obviously) on either my desktop or laptop. How do I do that wihtout the problems I have had with corrupt pST files?

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

_tech_guru_papa_ — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 00:11:26 GMT

Hello Everybody

Windows vista is also causing lots of boot problems, so I often get questions like this:

I have a Dell Dimension, which won’t boot to Windows (Vista), and none the repair options work:

Startup repair: Reports repair fail due to problem with registry

System Restore: Reports no restore points available

Windows Complete PC Restore: Reports no backups available

Windows Memory Diagnostic Tool: No memory problems

Command Prompt.

Can’t think of any appropriate command to use here.

So I booted with the system DVD (as one would with XP) but the upgrade

option has been greyed don’t want to do a new setup. I want to fix existing

installation.

What should I do?

------------------------------------------------------------

So here is the answer:

You can't do a 'repair install' because you need to launch the Vista DVD

from within Windows, not, as you have been doing, booting straight from the

DVD; that is why the 'upgrade' is greyed out.

If you cannot launch Vista and none of the fix options will work a new

install is the only other option.

To save problems in future it is actually a good idea to make image of the hard drive, using software like True Image. What I do is install operating system, download all updates, check system I working okay for a day or two, activate system, then create image of the whole drive/partition. Any time I get a problem I can re-image the drive/partition quickly and be up and running without much trouble. And minor repairs are done by using any registry fix tool, there are plenty of them on the market today.

Regards,

Carl

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Peter Essig — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 02:54:25 GMT

We currently use Outlook 2000 and intensively use PST files.

Our project management system requires that we can quickly retreive emails for a particular project. We have about 10,000 projects stored. This increases by around 1000 per year. Each has pst files which contain 1 to 1000 emails.

We are considering going to an exchange server solution. This looks good from a security point of view.

But how do we maintain the direct access to each project and quickly access emails for a specific project? What is the set up we should adopt?

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

CC Hameed — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 15:01:42 GMT

Peter - Public Folders may be your best approach, although a Vaulting solution also has merit. I've had some folks recommend using SharePoint to store all of this information, however I would have concerns over the significant storage concerns for such a large amount of flat data. Public Folders and a Vault Solution would both be searchable, and provide management and recovery capabilities not available to large .PST files, and certainly not to .PST files on the wire.

- CC

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Satheesh V. — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 16:15:38 GMT

Wow! This is actually a very good tip!

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Lee Bates — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 17:20:14 GMT

I have been storing user's PSTs on Linux SME-Servers for a while now and have never had any of the performance or degradation issues that the MS Server folk appear to be having. An earlier poster said the same thing and the Novell user also found no problems.

So, is the problem really with the PSTs or with MS Server?

Admittedly I don't have 500+ users accessing this way, but the PSTs I have dealt with were large enough to be filling the local hard drives of the old-but-perfectly-serviceable W2K workstations and causing slowdown issues locally. As usual, user re-education is just not viable.

Storage on the Linux servers I have deployed is plentiful and backed up using DAR2 every night. This solution makes more financial sense to the company boss who ultimately writes the cheques for new equipment and software, especially in the current economical climate.

Maybe rather than a large scale upgrading of workstations to store PSTs locally and purchase expensive backup software for each individual workstation, why not hang a dedicated inexpensive Linux server on the network to handle nothing but PSTs?

Lee

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Kevin McD — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 04:31:20 GMT

I'm well aware that PST access over a LAN link is unsupported as outlined here (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/297019/) and here (http://blogs.technet.com/askperf/archive/2007/01/21/network-stored-pst-files-don-t-do-it.aspx).

I've only recently seen a marked increase in the symptoms outlined in "things that may happen if you do this" such as 2020 errors in the System log of the File server cluster node that hosts the files, and also plenty of random "Outlook cannot access the PST" , "Item cannot be displayed", "archive is full", etc.

I can't point to a reason why it's started happening so much in the last 2 weeks, but has reached critical mass. We understand that in general for an enterprise setting, PSTs are unacceptable in this setup for many reasons, and are looking toward an archiving solution, but I need a way to try to stem the immediate pain.

Above the author notes "Is there any server-side tweaking that can be done to mitigate some of these effects? Yes. Is there any guarantee that this will resolve the problem completely and indefinitely? No. "

Can anyone speak to tweaking that I can assess to tide me over while the powers that be come up with an implementation plan for an archiving solution? Is the tweaking on the file server, the outlook client, or within exchange?

Client - Outlook 2002

File Server - 2003 Cluster

Exchange - 2005

Many thanks...

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Christopher Hilliard — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 17:18:01 GMT

It's better to ger rid of PST files at all.

It was always a big pain for us but some time ago we implemented archive manager that was able to solve the problem.

This solution captures all incoming/outgoing email traffic to a central database storing only a single copy of all messages and attachments, saving a lot of diskspace and providing rich google-like search abilities across all messages.

As for PST files we just imported all the content to the database using built-in PST Importer and we're not using them amymore.

http://www.scriptlogic.com/products/archive-manager

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Loren Eslinger — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 18:28:38 GMT

Kevin McD....Read my previous posting.

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Loren Eslinger — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 19:46:44 GMT

The issue with MS file servers and PST files is typically the pagedpool memory. The more users that hold PST files open the more pagedpool memory is used. If you have undersized your file server memory, you may have issues with PST files performance and/or PST files not opening.

If you have large number of users and/or many users with multiple PST files open at the same time you can quickly exaust your pagepool memory and have issues regarding PST performance and/or PST flies not opening.

Checking the pagedpool value in Task Manager is the easiest verification of pagedpool usage. For a server with 4GB RAM, the pagedpool value should be significantly less than 160 MB. If the value is close to 160MB then you are most likely exausting pagedpool.

Read me previous post to this blog on pagedpool memory for more information and suggested readings and fixes. Hint: Trim the pagedpool at 60 percent, not the default 80 percent.

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Alexandre Grigoriev — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 02:42:21 GMT

@Lee Bates:

The problem in MS SMB server implementation. It doesn't have ANYTHING to do with PST files and Outlook. Why does it have to allocate a full-sized buffer for every I/O Read request received? It could have a preallocated pool of limited size and queue the requests up. Currently, because WAN link is too slow, it can receive a lot of requests, but will hit a backlog because it can't send data fast enough.

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

NetworkAdminKB — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 08:33:53 GMT

I would have to agree with Loren. The issue with PST files is pagedpool memory, you can find some really good information on my web site regarding this issue and how to fix it.

http://networkadminkb.com/kb/Knowledge%20Base/How%20to%20Performance%20Tune%20for%20PST%20file%20performance%20and%20access%20issues.aspx

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Phil — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 14:02:32 GMT

I'd be very interested to know whether people have found a 64 bit implementation, with its much larger paged & non-paged pools, solves the problem of them running out.

We had our file system living fairly happily on a six year old Windows 2000 cluster, which included about 2,000 PSTs spread over three volumes. We have now begun a migration of the system to a new much faster (dual quad core, 8GB RAM) Windows 2003 cluster, but once the three PST volumes were moved over we found that when it's all on one node the system quickly runs out of non-paged memory (something that doesn't happen on the old system). Spreading the PSTs across the cluster (so each has about 1,000) has made it stable, but of course it's not a redundant cluster like that.

I wish it was the paged pool running out as there seems to be quite a lot you can do to tweak it, but with the non-paged there seems to be nothing other than not using /3GB.

I understand Microsoft doesn't like PSTs over the network, but I think there's a couple more fundamental things that need addressing:

Firstly, noting that other commenters have been in this situation, what is the difference between Windows 2000 and 2003 memory management that means the former will work and the latter doesn't?

It's one thing when something has never worked, but to implement a solution that is effectively 'the same, but faster' and find that it can't handle something the slower one could is particularly nasty and not something it's actually terribly easy to plan for.

Secondly, as many have noted, we administrators have to deal with the world as we find it. I personally inherited the situation in which I find myself and cannot wave a wand to make 2,000 PSTs disappear and am in a position whereby the supposed performance enhancement has actually made it worse, something managers dislike a great deal. With that in mind a response from Microsoft that helps us into a better position so that we can get rid of PSTs in a business-friendly way rather than the current blunt answer would be very helpful.

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Alex — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 01:12:16 GMT

Avoid the use of pst files. If you needs to use pst files, then save it locally in the workstation. Use a network backup solution like Arcerve Backup in order to backup this files.

Another solution is to have Email Archiving. Email archiving have several benefits:

- central repository

- easy to backup

- small storage sizes

- quick indexing searchs

- legal compilance

- you avoid internal users trying to steal company email

- integration with outlook (or other email clients)

- support for VLD (very large databases)

You can use EAS; Veritas or any other solution you can afford. With email archive solution the PST issue are things from the past.

Let me tell you I keep some old old pst files in a Buffalo Terastation radi 5 with XFS and works very well with 10 users accesing pst files concurrently. Maybe XFS is better than NTFS for pst storage, remember XFS don`t need to be defragmented and have different access routines.

Regards

Alex

MCP MCSA MCSE MCTS A+ CST HPSAN HPCZ ETRUST

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Christine — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 19:58:01 GMT

so what are the alternative for saving and storing emails?

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Mike Halford — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 20:21:04 GMT

After we moved PST files to workstations, as Microsoft recommends, we implemented the EdgeSafe backup solution that was mentioned in a former post.

The server related problems have been obviously solved. Plus we have gained the ability do "image" recovery of PST files and at the same time have the ability to recover deleted items.

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Jim — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 02:13:30 GMT

I never saw an answer to storing the PST file on a Windows Home Server.

We are a small (two people) office using Outlook 2003. One computer uses Outlook with the PST on WHS. The other computer uses OLFolders to access Outlook PST on WHS. This allows complete sharing of the PST info. Everything seems to work fine.

Question: Sometimes, mail from a Yahoo.com account fails to arrive via POP3 but the ISP says it was delivered to our mail box. Is this a familiar problem to anyone?

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

CC Hameed — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 02:19:35 GMT

Jim - Accessing .PST files stored on Windows Home Server is unsupported (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/955690).

- CC

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Steve — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 06:15:48 GMT

Very interesting thread - again like most IT staff - this one snuck up and caught us. We have about 100 users with up to 1.2gb .pst files

these .pst files all lived happily on a Winnt server in the users work areas.

We migrated up to Windows 2003 and now this bug bites us hard although randomly and haphazardly every day.

I know some have asked - but no answers have been forthcoming .

Why is it that Windows NT or Windows 2000 eats this sort of access for breakfast and yet - Windows 2003 spits and coughs and cant swallow.

For mine - A huge backward step from Microsoft - now where is my Windows Server 2000 disk

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

CC Hameed — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 06:27:07 GMT

Steve -

I suspect that over the course of time, various tuning settings were applied on your old server(s) to the server service, and memory management areas - so it may appear that Windows 2003 is less reliable, when in fact it just hasn't been tuned. Take a look at the KB articles referenced at the end of the post - they have some tuning settings.

However - the underlying message remains the same - although you can tweak and tweak the server to allow for this sort of file access, at some point you run out of tweaks ...

This might be a good time to start talking about cleanup and getting rid of those .PST files.

- CC

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Steve — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 06:54:58 GMT

thanks for your response - so I tend to disagree

To be honest the NT server was a bog standard NT Server 4.0 install with Service Pack 6 applied - t did nothing but serve data storage - I built it years ago with no tweaks no special adjustments - nothing out of normal

The Windows 2003 machine has 20 times the disk storage - 4 times the memory - 4 times the number of CPU's - much faster CPU's at that

Win2003 server must be using more resources OR allocating less resources - At this stage I am seeking none of the listed telltale events in the event log

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

David — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 00:21:56 GMT

There are a lot of suggestions for buying some archive solution or add storage and keep everything in the exchange store. Which would be fine if I had the resources. But since I don't or won't for some time I have to live within my means which means pst files. And keeping them on the local drive is a terrible solution in my opinion. You have to back them up somehow and doing it from the desktop is adding more complexity which violates the KISS rule of which I believe in wholeheartedly. I am going to tweak the page pool settings and see what happens. I will let this post know how it goes.

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

marcos — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 02:46:10 GMT

so how can put email info on a server

my email server is a comercial one.

I dont have exchange so how can i put the email info on a network share

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

nozbas — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 16:57:55 GMT

This is a very interesting article. I also have situation which is giving me headache. For about 4 months now, I’m working for a company with 4 locations. All the locations have an Exchange 2007 running on a windows 2003 (64) servers. I was surprised with the fact that about 75% of the employees have a mailbox size between 5 GB and 17 GB on the server. They are working with office 2007 and because they are mobile workers they have also an ost file on their laptop. Further they have a pst file for archive purpose which must be available every time of the day. These pst file are located on the network and they are growing. The company exists of 180 employees. As you see I need a solution to reduce the size of the mailboxes without decreasing the functionality they have now. Has anyone any ideas for me.

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Chris — Mon, 04 May 2009 13:23:13 GMT

Large exchange stores = large OST files (cached exchange mode) = frequent OST file corruption over slow links or dial-up VPN connections. I cant win. However, I am moving away from PST files in part because of the lockups described in this article.

I believe that some of the reasons why the old win2k/WinNT servers dont exhibit the same issues is due to the number of extra services that 2k3 is running.

For example, look at Volume Shadow Copy services. If you take snapshots then you will most likely see your 2020 and 2019 event IDs happen near the snapshot times. If you use backup software that makes use of volume shadow copy then you can see similar issues. Just watch the poolmon during snapshots or when backup software is running for some scary data.

Then take that and throw in things like user quotas, bloated antivirus software, and tracking of larger volumes. I only started to see this issue after updating my antivirus software... Of course there is no such thing as a simple virus scanner anymore. Its all 'security solutions' that eat up resources and make my new server slower than my old servers.

I think I really need to migrate my storage to 64 bit host servers. Unfortunately thats not in the cards for several years.

On a side note... Despite my problemsI love love love volume shadow copy. Even with the extra resources it uses I wouldn't give it up after using it for the last two years. I've shown so many users the 'previous versions' capability and my calls for tape backup restores have gone to almost zero. In my mind VSS makes up for having to create a dedicated PST server.

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Marek — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 10:42:01 GMT

We have Outlook mail client with PST files for the last 11+ years, serving our email infrastructure very well. It is true that once in a while we had a corrupt PST, but with 7,000 users and a total 12 TBytes of data we did not want to change the way we work, nor betting on another database solution consolidating so much data.

So we decided to take another small step and secure our PST file, so if a failure occurs we will be able to recover the PST file. After searching for alternatives we decided to simply backup the PST file, and used PST2PST backup which is centrally managed and runs the backup seamlessly. With 7,000 members that is the key point for us.

The notebook users with their PST files are now secured, and PST files are gradually being moved from the network to workstations.

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Ben — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 13:26:38 GMT

Interesting article but you could have suggested some alternatives. Obviously users cannot store these files locally, as they contain their archived correspondence for the last few years. Clearly these also can't be imported back into Exchange. Using your scenario as an example, 200 users with 3 1Gb PST files each = 600Gb - and what about mailbox limits - these will also go out the window? Archiving solutions are expensive .... can we use another exchange back end server with archive mailboxes somehow?

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Dale — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 20:56:50 GMT

This is a problem I am having with Microsoft Office Outlook

Cannot start Microsoft Office Outlook. Cannot open the Outlook window. The set of folders cannot be opened. The file C:\Documents and Settings\Dale\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\Outlook.pst is use and cannot be accessed. Close any application that is using this file, and then try again. You might need to restart your computer.

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Llib Setag — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 16:12:23 GMT

If you want to create a lot of calls to your help desk, end up on a lot of conference calls, up late at night troubleshooting weird issues, and attend a lot of meetings, have someone blindly implement a corporate solution to save .pst files to your fleet W2k3 Standard builds used for your user homedirs.

Over the wan we have many locations across the country with w2k3 standard servers with 600-700 gig of storage most of which is used for personal storage of user homedirs. The builds are on well known hardware from a premier vendor.

A couple of years back someone implemented a corporate solution to save mail archives to the local servers in each office. It wasn't too long after that, the problems began to roll in and it went on for several months.

Some of the major issues were:

- Users would get kicked out of the server or couldn't connect to at all. Their network drive mappings to the server would disappear.

- Sporadically, administrators could not RDP to the servers and when they did the desktop and window icons would be partially blacked out.

- Ntbackup would not run correctly and the backup logs showed zero bytes and files backup in the backup logs but stated that the operation completed successfully.

Server and network management was livid about the entire issue as they had no idea that desktop support had implemented the .pst solution. Being stubborn they insisted that the solution be abandon. Since it was so wide spread there was no way to back out of the .pst solution. I worked with Microsoft for several weeks and we came up with a tweak to the pagepool that has worked now for going on two years. I’ve implemented the same solution on every single server that has had the issue and each issue listed above went away and never came back.

Although things have worked out for us, I would suggest that you do not implement saving .pst file via unc or drive mappings unless you hire additional staff to handle the increase call volume you’ll receive from your user population. Find a different solution.

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

kates — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 18:38:35 GMT

Llib,

Can you share the tweak information that fixed this problem?

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Neal — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 19:36:26 GMT

Are these recommendations for storing or accessing? What if a PST is only stored on the network drive and never accessed?

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

CC Hameed — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 20:06:12 GMT

@Neal - if all you're doing is storing the .PST files on the server and no clients attach to them, then you are OK. Once the clients start attaching to them across the wire, then you may start seeing issues.

@Kates - take a look at KB312362 (referenced in the post) - there is a registry modification that changes the threshold at which Paged Pool memory is trimmed.

- CC

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Sheik Geek — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 01:33:24 GMT

Although you can perform registry changes to trim the paged pool memory, you still risk corruption of the PST's and other files residing on a LAN/WAN volume. To be more specific, if the servers are clustered, hangs, MPIO errors, NTFS errors may occur. The server will note/suggest running chkdsk, but unfortunately as long as PST files are stored and accessed, the symptoms will not go away.

There's a reason Microsoft DOES NOT SUPPORT THIS CONFIGURATION. Any arguement against their stance on support is insane, as THEY are the creators of the technology.

Your best bet is to have users be responsible for their own data. You have another alternative. For SMB's, users should store their own PST's. For "Enterprise Companies" most have some sort of Vault/backup/archiving of email. As mentioned earlier in this thread, EAS, Symantec Ent Vault are solutions.

Invest in proper design, as the costs of support or re-design will be greater in the long run.

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Svyatoslav Pidgorny — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 03:45:15 GMT

We have many users who are happily using PSTs over the network. The difference is that they are on NetApp NAS.

Question to the performance team: will the x64 version of Windows (2003 or 2008) also suffer form paged pool depletion if the users have networked PSTs?

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

ken.absolute — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 01:08:18 GMT

From pstools utilities; http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896649.aspx

psfile.exe | find /i ".pst"

Will give you an idea of the .pst file usage on your file server.

I have about 180 open pst files on my file share as I speak, and it's not all bad (though distributed across 3 drives)

As far as "Don't do it!", I would like to introduce Microsoft to Layer 8 of the OSI model - The political layer:

True, relying on users to manage their own .pst files in a enterprise environment is bad regardless of the file types performance. Budget issues aside, our limited hardware and backup windows prevent our users from having mail stores over 650mb. 3rd party vaulting solutions are not anything we will be looking at for the foreseeable future either, though I'm trying to hype it up so executives would at least want it for themselves (start out at 25 licenses for executives and their assistance's... add some managers... ???... start the road to modernization!). Otherwise, to retrieve mail more than a few months old, it is a multi hour process or days if it involves our offsite storage service.

So, no matter what, about 30% of the user base relies on PST files on network shares - mostly roaming and thin client users.

These are the settings implemented on our file server and seem to allow up to 200 .pst file's to be open over the network without too many problems, though your mileage may vary depending on actual .pst usage and hardware:

@echo off

:: PoolUsageMaximum below is not present in registry by default,

:: but default system behavior would have it at 80

reg add "HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management" /V PoolUsageMaximum /T REG_DWORD /F /D "40"

:: PagedPoolSize is set to 0 by default

:: do not implement this on 32bit 2003 servers with more than 64gb of RAM

reg add "HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management" /V PagedPoolSize /T REG_DWORD /F /D "4294967295"

:: Chimney is supposed to offload TCP/IP processing to network adapters,

:: but some NIC driver cause high NonPaged pool usage. Optional if NIC drivers are suspect.

Netsh int ip set chimney DISABLED

:: default setting is usually 1. increases the non pagepool memory

FSUtil.exe behavior set memoryusage 2

:: as mentioned in previous posts, your RAID controller needs mondo cache

:: and if your on a SAN, be mindful of other projects being shared on the

:: SAN space.

:: also check out

:: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;555041

:: for other file server/client performance tips

In conclusion, the article is much appreciated! Still, the archaic high I/O methods used to access .pst files in these modern times boggles many of us. If my users of Word, Excel, Photoshop and AutoCAD had the same problems accessing their files, network shares would be impossible. I find it unbelievable that one user transacting with his or her .pst file over the network can cause more havoc than dozens of MS Access databases being written to at once. Please MS, bring pst files into the 21st century.

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

Giorigo — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 09:11:36 GMT

What I have to do with Terminal server users in a 2003 enviroment?

Thay have Roaming profile and network storage only.

Have I to buy a 3rd part solution?

re: Network Stored PST files ... don't do it!

CC Hameed — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 17:29:50 GMT

@Giorigo - If the .PST files are stored in the user's roaming profile and downloaded to the Terminal Server at user logon that is different than having the .PST file stored on a file server and accessed across the LAN / WAN.

- CC