Hosted Exchange Problems

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understand the frustration

Any thoughts on colocating your own exchange server?

Scott

For $700 a month I can set you up with a dedicated exchange server with each mailbox having 8GB+ if you’re interested.

I suppose the obvious question (which may have already been asked but isn’t noted) would be: why do you need Exchange?

Chris,

I think you are asking the wrong questions.

For speed/corruption you should never hit 2GB, so
asking about going over it is like asking why can’t
13 eggs go in a carton — technically it can, but
with poor results.

The way to not hit their 2GB limit is to not hit it. Use
your host for current emails in the last month or so,
and organize other email into Archives or local PSTs.

Then you’ll be under their limit, have faster throughput,
less chance for loss, etc.

Markus Diersbock
SwingNote

No, wait – that’s not what it means. You don’t have to sacrifice old emails at all. Okay, some detail that will hopefully help others who read this comment…

The OST file is a mirror of what’s on the server. So if they hard-limit your Exchange account on-server to 2GB, then your OST will not row larger than that.

The PST file is a local file only and has nothing to do with the Exchange server. Email that lands in a PST is most likley already removed from the exchange server – it’s local.

I deal with this sort of thing myself (but with a lot less than 2GB storage on the Exchange server). I autoarchive in the background anything older than, say, two months (or whatever timeframe make sense) into a PST file. I also keep more than one PST file around for a historical archive of literally all my past email, like going back years (depending on the volume, one PST tends to span 6 months to a year for me, which makes for a nice informal filing system).

Note that you can remove attachments from emails as well (without deleting the whole email), which significantly cuts down on the amount of storage space required either in PSTs or on-server.

Call me if you want to discuss more. :) Also call me if you want to set up and Exchange server yourself. It’s not the simplest thing, but it’s also not rocket science.

greg

Waitaminute… .PST means a local Outlook file – Why would you have to put the whole thing on Exchange? Why not just use it for its intended functionality and keep the old stuff in a PST archive on your machine?

Or, in your position, you might be able to swing a good deal on MS Exchange Server and just load it up on one of your machines (i.e. home.pirillo.com or something)

Scott has a good point. Btw, thanks for the inspiration on this bit:
http://www.lockergnome.com/nexus/it/2007/08/27/exchange-archiving-did-i-miss-something-here

Not to be a jerk here, but can’t you archive a lot of those emails and save yourself a bunch of space. I guess I just never saw the point of having 2gb of emails on tap ALL THE TIME.

Chris, like Jason Dunn, I’m a 4Smartphone.net customer; I have no otherr affiliation with the company. Double check on their single user Enterprise plan: one for you and one for Ponzi.

http://4smartphone.net/GetStartedServicePlanOptions/Enterprise2007Plans/tabid/74/Default.aspx

It’s $17.95 a month each and does have the 2 GB limit that seems fairly standard BUT they offer additional space at $13 for 2 GB after the limit. I’ve had very few issues with them over the past 18 months and I routinely have five or more devices (Mac, PC and Windows Mobile) in sync with my account there at any given time. They recently raised their rates by quite a bit, which isn’t a plus in my book, but they should be able to accommodate your storage requirement. You might even be able to use a lower plan with a custom price for the additional storage. If you have the right connectivity and hardware, running your own Exchange server is a definitely do-able alternative.

Chris -
Try themessagecenter.com. Been fairly happy with them as a hosted exchange provider.
- todd

Greg is right. I’ve been on a hosted Exchange Server for 6 years and it’s great. I auto-archive my stuff to only keep the past 3 months on the server, the rest moves to an archive PST file locally. Works like a charm.

First of all, stay FAR way from 1&1. They’re crap and unless you speak fluent indian you won’t get any help. Your best option, get Google hosting service and port in your pst. Provided you pay the premium you’ll get 10 gig of space. Premium also has an outlook import feature. We moved all our accounts to it and haven’t looked back.

This is a perfect example of why we need an open-source Exchange-type alternative. In my dream world, this is based on a decentralized open social network, with the backing storage owned by the user himself. Pay as you go, that type of thing.

Thanks for clearing up the Exchange mysteries, Greg. I use two for different needs and yet still have a lot to learn as to their ins-and-outs. :)

Google Apps all the way. If only they allowed IMAP access.

I’m hosting my personal domain and my wife’s. Easy to set up and free.

I can’t stand exchange. Their paradigm drives me nutty.

> No, wait – that’s not what it means. You don’t have
> to sacrifice old emails at all.

@GregGughes, why do you write the above and then go on to describe exactly what I said in my post?

Chris,

Check out.
http://www.webmail.us/email-hosting/features

Might be what you are looking for

Edgardo

It sounds like you either fell on a new sales rep, or you were chatting with a company that does not offer all the options that Hosted Exchange has.

With Exchange 2007, you can have mailboxes upto 15GB. Now remember that most Exchange Hosting Companies charge by the mailbox. Some companies (ours included) will allow you to aggregate disk space amoung users in the same company/domain. So if you have 2 users that need around 2GB each, you can get 2 of our Executive 3000 plans (3000MB per mailbox). This way as long as your total disk space is under 6000MB, you will be OK. You can go upto 15GB per mialbox.

Some more on the pricing at http://www.123together.com/sehp/Exchange_Hosting_2003_Server.xhtml.

That said, some companies (ours excluded) also charge for bandwidth, so make sure you check that as well.

Have you tried Kerio? It’s an exchange replacement, it’s $399 for 5 users I believe. The best part is that Kerio really supports mac users and outlook/exchange users! The mobile integration w/ Windows Mobile 6 is really great. Kerio can even wipe your phone if you lose it and it is connected to the server!

Chris,

I have 23 SMB clients in the Washington, DC area … I’ve moved all of them to a hosted Exchange solution. The Exchange host that I use is AppRiver. AppRiver costs just a few dollars a month per account, however the best part is that they have no limits … many of my clients have .pst files weighing in at over 4GB each … no problem with AppRiver.

Kenneth

You can set up exchange to go beyond 2g as long as you keep your email on the server. Now if you bring it down to a pst on your personal computer then you are limited to 2g. All you have to do then is set up your auto archive and it will clean up your pst. You still have visibility of your email in an archived folder.

I thought with Office 2003 that they switched to unicode for PST files thus raising the 2 GB limit to 20 GB.

Isn’t the limit for the pst files in the 2007 version at 4 gigs? I thought so… I used 1&1 for about 2 years. After a while i noticed that I won’t become lucky and switched to another local hoster here in Germany.

Why not get away from the Exchange limitations altogether and go with a hosted IMAP server? Outlook supports IMAP (of course) albeit slightly clunkily, and of course there is always T-Bird…

A hosted IMAP server has virtually no limitations on drive space, and you can just leave as much as you like on the server in folders. Good providers will also provide a way to do server-side message filtering directly into those folders, so you don’t have to sync anything but the Inbox to mobile devices, for example.

Some people recommend a Google host solution. Does Google have an exchange host or are you suggesting gmail/pop service?

Some have asked why bother with exchange. In my case I need exchange to get real time calendar, contacts and email on blackberry, laptop and desktop computers. I dont have time to link & sync every couple hours. Hosted exchange is one solution that allows access to the same up-to-date information no matter what computer/phone I am using. If anyone has suggestions for another tool that works as seamlessly as hosted exchange with blackberry please let me know.

Any experienced Exchange administrator is going to want to have a limit on mailbox size. It just makes good sense – especially being a hosted provider. Say your account (or someone else’s) gets a virus that starts propogating mail to the mailbox – it could lock up an entire server if there isn’t a “hard limit”.

One thing is that Exchange does offer a warning before the mailbox gets full. There are also huge costs in reliably backing up and storing Exchange data. It really depends on your needs – for some people the Google model works, other want the features that Exchange offers – the sharing, Outlook interface and seamless inegration with BlackBerry and Windows Mobile. It’s a premium service but there are some downsides including cost and mailbox limits.

I’m in the same situation, just found these guys and they seem promising

hmm, the url is apparently my Nmae. The co is Appriver – found them off Microsoft’s website of providers

Feel free to take a look at our services… we can support up to 15GB but offer sizes from 500MB to 3GB at $9.99 per month and up. Don’t get lost in the rat race that’s going on with exchange hosting companies, set up trial accounts, test out the service test out the support… see what you like. There’s no reason with exchange you can’t go over 2GB unless the admins are downright lazy and haven’t installed the patches causing issues on exchange 2007 with outlook 2007;. they’ve been fixed and we’ve all moved past those issues here. Dedicateds are crazy if you only have a couple users, even 20 users you should only be paying $200 a month, especially if the larger storage requirements are only with a few users.

AppRiver looks great. Do you know if they will work for one user only?