Sigh, I’m doing an offline defragmentation of my MS Exchange Server. Please don’t do what I did and wait until the database is 37 GB in size (that’s for priv1.edb and priv1.stm). I’m in for a long haul tonight as I wait for the database to defrag on its own. I’ve already had problems with lack of file space due to automated backups running on my online backup program interfering with the temp files that eseutil, MS’s Exchange defrag utility, was creating.
At least, it’s not too slow (3 GB every 10 minutes). At this rate it should be done around 1 AM! You know, all the time, effort and hardware to maintain an Exchange e-mail server has a pretty high cost. Microsoft is now offering what it calls “Exchange Hosted Services”. It’s Microsoft’s attempt to sell Exchange as a service so that your typical SMB customer doesn’t have to hire an Exchange administrator. Microsoft is charging $17.25 per user per month up to 3.6 GB per user.
I would suggest that all nonprofits start to factor archiving costs into their e-mail especially when senior staff start to insist on large e-mail archives. I’m thinking of using Microsoft’s pricing sheet as a baseline cost that I’ll use to discuss how expensive data archiving is. Let me tell you one thing, it’s quite a bit more than $17.25 per user at my shop when you factor in tape-based and online backups.
$6240 for the labor
$4000 per year for the auto tape loader and tapes (amortized over 4 years)
$2400 per year for the online backups
equals $12640 per year or roughly $126.40 per user
vs Microsoft’s cost of $2070 per year.
Hmm… now I’m thinking this isn’t such a bad idea after all… If any of you know of anything cheaper, go right ahead and suggest!
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I’ve been using PerfectDisk Exchange and have automated the whole Exchange defrag process. Pretty good stuff and they gave a healthy NP discount.
http://www.raxco.com/products/pd2kexch/
Ben
Thanks, I’m looking into buying PerfectDisk Exchange as well.