For SysAds: What to Do About Those .PST Files?

If you want to see a topic that IT folks really get into heated debate about, Google the search phrase "network PST". PST files -- those huge files that Microsoft Outlook creates locally on workstations to store/archive just about anything from email to contacts to tasks -- are a system administrator's nightmare. Stored locally on each user's C: drive, they almost never get backed up to tape. Essentially unseen by everyone (including the user), they can grow to gargantuan size. And without being part of the user's roaming profile, they don't transfer when a user receives a new PC.

Originally, I thought that the best practice was to redirect all PST files to a server location, preferably a folder eponymous with the username. The rationale was that by keeping all the PST files on a server, they could both be backed up and kept in-check. However, the more research I do, the more I think this server-side PST file idea is a bad one. For starters, here's Microsoft's stance on this practice:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/297019/en-us

Here's one article that talks about why server-based PSTs are a bad practice:

http://blogs.technet.com/askperf/archive/2007/01/21/network-stored-pst-files-don-t-do-it.aspx

Granted, they're talking about huge (multi-GB) PSTs being pulled by hundreds of clients simultaneously, which is not the case with our network. (No user appears to have a PST file larger than 700 MB, and nearly all PST files are under 100 MB.)

However, I'm still concerned about the possibility for data corruption and server downtime.

There are a lot of alternate solutions being debated on all these tech blogs, but two easy ones that make sense for us stick out in my mind:

1. Continue to use the server as a PST store, but only as a backup.

Have the users write to their PST files locally, then have a logoff script upload the PST files at the end of the work day. No more worries of data corruption and server bandwidth problems, but we can still see how big everyone's PST files are and maintain a backup of them should any of the workstation hard drives crash.

2. Standardize/lock down the AutoArchive function of Outlook via GPO.

Here's how: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/ork2003/HA011402861033.aspx (Most users have no idea what the heck they're agreeing to when the AutoArchive dialog box pops up.) Doing this, you can also set up a Retention Policy, which is disabled by default if you go to your Outlook settings and look at the bottom of the AutoArchive dialog box:




This is the PST backup script that I created:

@echo off
cls
echo This script will copy all OST and PST files
echo from your C: drive to M:\Outlook_Backup.
echo Please exit from Microsoft Outlook before continuing.
echo ----------------------------------------------------------
pause
echo.
md M:\Outlook_Backup
cd "%USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook"
copy *.* M:\Outlook_Backup\
pause