If you have ever had anything to do with Outlook in your organisation you will no doubt have some experience (pain) with the use of PST files. PST files are of course the main way users can store their email information on their local hard drive or network share (Network stored PST files don’t do it) thus avoiding the email mailbox size limits. Of course PST files have many problem and pose a nightmare for network admins when someone says they have either lost a PST file or worse it gets corrupt. While it is really easy for people to say lets just ban all PST files the reality of this is a lot more difficult…
With the new Archives feature in Exchange 2010 and its support for lower cost storage this has started to allow users to have bigger mailboxes. Office 365 even gives users a default mailbox size of 25gb (up to unlimited) depending on the plan the user it signed up for. Problem is that users could still have PST files even thought they might now have plenty of space in their mailbox…
Well Microsoft has just announced they have released a tool that allow admins to automatically crawl users computers and import PST files into Exchange Online or Exchange 2010.
Download http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=28767
So you might be wondering what this has to do with Group Policy… well… once you have completed the migration of the PST files you can then implement the Prevent users from adding new content to existing pst files policy setting to stop users ever, ever, ever, ever using PST file again….
Blog Post: Out Now: Official PST to Exchange Import Tool http://t.co/syO64umk
@MSAU @auteched you need to spread the word about this new tool http://t.co/3Z4jGClK
Blog Post: Out Now: Official PST to Exchange Import Tool http://t.co/syO64umk
25G per user or up to unlimited access sounds good. but my question is, do we really need to store user emails on the exchange server? for what? what advantges does it have over storing emails on user computers using pst files?
Central management and backups, you can’t control what users do with pst files on their comnputers.
Official PST client crawling Import to Exchange Tool released! http://t.co/LN78Zmar
Out Now: Official PST to Exchange Import Tool: http://t.co/v8V8iBzQ
Out Now: Official PST to Exchange Import Tool: http://t.co/v8V8iBzQ
Guys,
here we are asked to comment not to keep posting that pst tool is out. yes its now out but what are your comments about it? l have a sked a simple question before that, whats better? storing emails on network drives or storing on user computers or storing them on exchange server?
l see it much better as IT Administrators to keep storing emails on user computers (PC) thats on pst files than storing emails on the network or exchange servers servers. Outlook is meant to make us receive, read and organise out email in a very smart way. Out look web acess isnt used much this day because of VPN or Direct Access which allows you to dial into your organisational network over the internet from anywhere in the world.
waiting to hear from your commends guys.
Rid.
Out Now: Official PST to Exchange Import Tool: http://t.co/G9nTu4KW