Archive/Personal folders question

[aubienat]

With regards to daily use and backup/restore of Outlook Archive/Personal
folders, does Microsoft have a recommended best practice?

I’ve inherited support of an environment where client PSTs are stored within
roaming profiles. While this setup allows for ease of Outlook use across
multiple workstations and Citrix/Terminal Services, there are obvious issues
including long logon/logoff times and data corruption of the PSTs. On
average, I receive one to two tickets a week due to data corruption. This is
bad. Bad for the clients, and (more importantly) bad for me since it causes
me more work.

My initial idea would be to store the PSTs locally on workstations. From
there I would use the Microsoft Personal Folders Backup utility for Outlook
2003 to keep a copy of the PSTs on the network. But wouldn’t I have the same
data corruption issue with the backed up version of the PSTs? Also, this
method presents a problem when a client logs in to Citrix since their PSTs
would not be available to them.

I’ve not been able to find any documentation from Microsoft (or anyone else
for that matter) referring to this three headed monster. Provide extra
storage space to my clients that is separate from their Exchange mailbox,
allow this data to be easily and readily available to the client, and
properly provide backup/restore of the data.

Any thoughts or ideas?

Thanks a bunch!

 

[DL]

If the pst's are stored on a network location this practice is not supported
by MS as it can lead to corruption.
The pst's should be located on the local PC (The corruption occurs if OL
accesses a network stored pst)
You could still use the backup utility on the local sys. (The backup utility
simply copies the pst) Then use whatever backup software you use to backup
pst's to a network location.
Of course one has to assume users will actually backup when prompted and
actually close OL to start the process.
If OL is open when you run any backup software any pst's that are still
connected will I recollect not backup (File in use)
Another option is if users shutdown would be to create a batch/script to
copy pst's to another location as part of the shutdown process.

 

[aubienat]

DL,

Yeah, I want to change our procedure for PST support. Specifically, I want
to get the files off of the network since Microsoft says that a big No, No.
Thanks for your 2 ideas. I've actually thought of them already, but they
have 1 limitation. Many of my clients utilize a Terminal Server we've set up
in application mode for remote login capabilities. Basically, via a Citrix
connection, our clients can access their email from home. Because of roaming
profiles, they can also access their archive folders. If the PST is stored
on the local workstation then it will not be accessible via the TS
connection. Is there anyway around this limitation? Or is it just the way
it has to be in order to offer the best support of Archive folders?

Thanks again for the comments.