Sharpeware

SPACEWatch^tm for Exchange.

When Exchange Public Folder structures get large they get difficult to manage - and worse than this they can start to overload your infrastructure delivering increasingly unacceptable performance to users. SPACEWatch for Exchange is an ideal tool for cleaning up your Exchange Public Folders - whether you want to improve performance; reduce storage requirements; or are planning a migration. This Best Practice guide summarizes some of the ways you can do this with SPACEWatch for Exchange. It is assumed that the reader is already familiar with basic SPACEWatch for Exchange operation, and has an appropriate space database populated.

This best practice guide will describe how you can:

• Implement "quick win" solutions to immediately free up storage
• Find the "hot spots" in your public folder infrastructure
• Work on the detail of unused and unwanted files stored in your PF structure.

Note - all examples are taken from a Microsoft Exchange 2007 infrastructure using SPACEWatch for Exchange v5.7. You can use SPACEWatch with any version of Exchange from 5.5 onwards. It does not need to be installed on your servers so you can easily use it in a mixed environment, or to contrast before/after migration.


A good place to start on your public folder cleanup is with the easiest targets - the largest public folders and largest files. You can find these very easily from the Directory Finder and File Finder respectively. Follow these steps:

Largest public folders

FindMailboxes & Folders (Directory Finder will load) AnalyzeExchangeLargest Public Folders

In this example Marketing are the clear winners in the size of their public folders - double clicking on any folder will drill down to the File Finder and list the contents of the folder - whether files are attached to messages or not. You can then run off reports etc. to share these results with others.

Largest files

FindFiles & Messages (File Finder will load) AnalyzeLargest

In this example Marketing also have the largest files - note how you can see who created these files, as well as their location. This is very useful if you want to provide reports to users to help them in their own cleanup operations. In fact File Finder even has a handy "save by user" feature so you can split the results into different reports based on Owner in one quick action.


Next you may want to find where most space is being consumed across your public folders - if you have lots of public folders you probably aren't interested in those that have few or no files stored in them. To focus on the hot spot areas you can use the Tree Summary. This shows the rolled up total space consumed at each level in the folder structure - but more significantly, color-codes these so you can instantly investigate the major areas.

Tree summary

DataSummary (Tree Summary will load) Filter settings

In this example the filter setting was 0.2% - this means trees that contains less than 0.2% of total space are not shown. That way you can quickly see the hot spots without all the noise. If you want to see less/more detail change the Filter setting and click Refresh.

Double click any folder and you will see more detail in the Directory Finder. Double click a folder in the Directory Finder and you will see all the files in that folder listed - whether they are file objects or attached to messages.

Alternatively you may want to identify the top noncompliant file types - wherever they are stored in the public folder structure. For example, you may have large mp3 audio files that can easily be removed. You use the Types Summary for this analysis.

Types summary

DataSummaryTypes (Types Summary will be displayed) HighlightsAudio Files (All files defined as type audio will be highlighted)

The example above shows the types summary sorted by total space - in this Exchange infrastructure it is bitmap picture files that take up most space. To see all files of one variety - e.g. audio files - you can highlight these (you can define your own sets of highlight files by the way). If you want a quick summary of your highlighted file sets, click on the Charts button and choose Highlights.

Types summary

DataSummaryTypes (Types Summary will be displayed) ChartsHighlights

Once you have cleaned up the obvious hot spots you will probably want to spend more time on the detail - looking more closely at unwanted or old files - or duplication across your folders. With the Find Duplicates tool you can find duplicated files wherever they are - and also duplicated folders.

Find Duplicates

FindDuplicates (the Find Duplicates window will be displayed) Names/SizeSearch (duplicate sets of files will be listed) ViewDuplicates by Folder (see duplicate files by the folders they are contained in)

One of the more interesting ways you can search for duplication is by listing folders that are similar - by which we mean folders that have duplicated files in common. Clearly folders will vary in how similar they are depending on the quantity of duplicated files they have in common.


In the example above the "Tenders" folder is very similar in contents to the "HR" folder - they have a lot of files in common.

Find old files

FindFiles & Messages (File Finder will load) Date SearchFiles created, earlier than the last 6 monthsSearch (old files will be listed)

With the File Finder you can construct quite complex queries then run them with usually almost instant results - however large your Exchange infrastructure. For example you could narrow down the "old files" list to those old files larger than 1MB - simply add the constraint ">1M" to the Size box and repeat the search.

Or you might want to limit the search to just a particular part of your Public Folder infrastructure - choose the "Look in" option then browse to the tree you want to limit the search to.

Limit your search to files larger than 1MB

Limit your search to a particular Public Folder tree

Clearly SPACEWatch for Exchange 5 is an ideal tool to help you get back in control of your Public Folder infrastructure. With its highly interactive architecture you can quickly "dive in" and find out what is causing your issues; where to start first in sorting them out; and which data you can usefully share with users to help them in your objectives. If you have any further questions about cleaning up Public Folders please contact Sharpeware and we will be happy to discuss your issues further.