Hey everyone! I'm reaching out to get some insights from fellow sysadmins about managing Outlook PST files and storage in our environments. We've encountered the usual hurdles like oversized PST files, users storing them locally or on network shares, performance issues, and concerns around backups. I'm trying to strike the right balance between giving users flexibility and keeping things manageable for IT. A few specific things I'm curious about include: 1. Are you still permitting PST usage or have you completely moved away from them? 2. If you do allow them, do you have any size limits or designated storage locations? 3. What approach do you take for backups and recovery for PST files? 4. Have you implemented any tools or policies to minimize PST clutter? 5. Have you transitioned users to online archives or Exchange Online archiving instead? I'd really appreciate any strategies, policies, or tools that have been effective (or not) in your experience. Thanks!
6 Answers
This isn’t an issue I've dealt with for around 7 years now! We migrated to Exchange Online with online archives, and honestly, PSTs feel like a thing of the past.
Most of our data is hosted on Exchange Online now, with about 3 months of recent emails cached locally. If a mailbox is approaching its size limit, we trigger archiving rules for emails older than 2 or 3 years. It helps keep things organized.
We haven't used PST files in ages. They're just not worth the hassle anymore!
We've managed to ingest PSTs into users' accounts and set up archive mailboxes. We also use retention policies to control email movement. It’s super easy, especially since we’re on M365. We keep PSTs only for audits or when we need to provide data to HR.
What's your mail setup if you're still backing up PSTs? Back in the days of on-prem Exchange, it was already a struggle trying to back up all users' PSTs. With Office 365, we have a backup system that handles it at a server level which makes life a lot easier. We do have cases where user mailboxes exceed 50 GB, so we create archives to split their mail, but we don't back any of that up locally.
We’ve banned PSTs using Group Policy since we switched from Lotus Notes to Exchange. We promote the usage of archives instead, and we have generous mailbox size limits set up.
Totally agree! It's a pain, especially with multiple users on shared computers—managing PST sizes is a nightmare.