The Old Joel on Software Forum: Part 3 (of 5) - MS Exchange Server : Sending at a defined time how

MS Exchange Server : Sending at a defined time how

We're using MS Exchange Server at the office.

We have around 150 e-mail accounts set up.

Some of our users are sending enourmous attachement (~100 Mega) and sometimes to 50 different addresses.

During the day this is chewing up all our bandwith.

What we would like to know if it's possible in Exchange
to define that sort of rule :

- Send e-mails with an attachment bigger than 8 Még only after 20h00 ? (so they don't chew up the bandwith during the day as this has an impact on our FTP transmission module and our client server applications)

Or maybe an add-on ?

Any suggestions ?

Obviously talking to our users is like talking to a wall, they won't bloody listen! ;-)

Any inputs would be appreaciated!

Cheers,
Snacky

Snacky
Thursday, November 20, 2003

What's your network infrastructure like? I don't see there being a bandwidth problem with sending 100 MB emails to 50 recipients on a 100 Mbit switched network with a gigabit backplane. I could see it maybe slowing down your Exchange server, but it shouldn't be a problem on a modern network except in situations when it has to go over a low bandwidth channel such as a T1, DSL, or u-wave link to a remote site.

Matt Latourette
Thursday, November 20, 2003

Well we are convinced that there are flaws in our Network.

We're soon hiring company to do a full audit of our infrastructure but in the meantime we want to be able to send BIG e-mails after 20h00.

Is there (Ideally cheap) a Way ?

Snacky
Thursday, November 20, 2003

Sorry, but I must say it - Email is not a file transfer protocol.

Really.

Set up a network share or an FTP server.

Sending 100mb attachments to 50 people is ludicrous and will stress any mail server, Exchange probably being one of the worse ones for it

Dan G
Thursday, November 20, 2003

Exchange probably has a way to set a max size on attachments. Maybe you could use the exchange admin SDK to change that max size on a daily schedule.

dmooney
Thursday, November 20, 2003

you can also set a quota for the user-- 50Mb, and blam, they can't send or receive anything 'til they clean things up. note that's 50Mb total, not per-item. also it might rely on them using the sent items folder (the default).

of course if the user sending 50 Mb files is your boss, you may have to take a different approach.

there might also be some sort of Outlook Policy you can set.

mb
Thursday, November 20, 2003

"you can also set a quota for the user-- 50Mb, and blam, they can't send or receive anything 'til they clean things up."

What a brilliant idea! Let's waste the users' time and get them to hate the IT department by placing quotas on their mailboxes. Then the IT staff can waste their time too on help desk calls whenever someone is trying to send an important email and it won't go through because their mailbox or the recipient's mailbox is full. This also presents a splendid opportunity to really piss off the customers when their emails to tech support or salespeople bounce. I'd have to think pretty hard to come up with a lower yield use of an employee's time than the task of cleaning their mailbox.

Matt Latourette
Friday, November 21, 2003

Exchange does provide this feature. Just open the properties of your smtp connector and go to the "delivery options" tab. There you can configure a special transmit schedule for long messages (lets you define what's considered "long" as well).

Claus Christensen
Friday, November 21, 2003

Matt L. - Are you telling me the form I had to fill out and get two levels of manager approval to up my exchange mailbox from 50 to 60 mb was a waste of my time? You know disc space isn't cheap these days, unless you consider nickels and dimes loose change. :)

m
Friday, November 21, 2003

I had to do the same to get the mailbox we use to store job applicants letters and which is accessed by three or more people exempted from the 60MB rule. The main folder has 16,000 messages (none with attachments as I strip them out and save elsewhere) on it and thus takes up most of the space.

The problem isn't the quota though; it's the hurdles you have to go through to get exempted.

Stephen Jones
Friday, November 21, 2003

"Sending 100mb attachments to 50 people is ludicrous and will stress any mail server, Exchange probably being one of the worse ones for it"

Hey, if this guys system is delivering those messages, it is as least superior to ours (Solaris/qmail). My mail admin would barehandedly strangle anyone within 5 mins. after he discovered an attempt to pull 6,25 GB through his system.

Just me (Sir to you)
Friday, November 21, 2003

Yeah, teah. Make that 6.67 GB for the nitpickers. (Hey, I'm on my first coffee here).

Just me (Sir to you)
Friday, November 21, 2003

i only suggested the quota for two reasons:
1. until then, no one had suggested an exchange setting. (someone did shortly after)
2. these users clearly have no idea what disk space means, so a quota might be a sensible approach to preventing them from having hundreds of 50 Mb files. Though the particular quota size might be in doubt. (I just found that a big chunk of my mailbox is taken up with 5 5Mb word documents. Gone.)

mb
Friday, November 21, 2003

>You know disc space isn't cheap these days...<

Er, yes it is

Marx
Saturday, November 22, 2003