Effectively managing your email - how to eliminate PST

POWER PROTECT PROMOTE

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The Know-IT-All’s Guide to

PST File Elimination

Martin Tuip

[email protected]

Twitter: @mtuip

mailto:[email protected]


Introduction

• Today’s speaker Martin Tuip

• Sr. Technical Product Marketing Manager

• Autonomy

• 10 time Microsoft Exchange MVP

• Nearly a decade archiving experience


Agenda

• How did we get to the PST problem?

• Identify the challenges around managing PST files

• Tips on how bringing the PST files back under control


The PST Conundrum

• Ideal World

– Executives Set Policy

– IT Implements Policy

– End Users Do As They Are Told

• Real World

– Can’t Train Users

– Think It’s Their Data

– PST’s Are A Shell Game


How Did We Get Here?


Where’s My Data?

Exchange Databases

• Exchange Database (EDB) File(s)

• Streaming Content File (STM, pre 2007)

• Transaction Logs

• Mailboxes

• Folders

Active Directory

• Organizational

• Names

• Email Addresses

• Distribution Lists

Outlook

• Online (No Local Copies)

• Personal Store (PST)

• Offline Store (OST), Synchronized

• OST Cache-Mode, Replicated In Background

• Mobile- PDA’s, Phones


Typical Outlook Configuration

• Using Cache Mode (OST File)

– Synchronization Happens In The Background

– Better Perceived Performance On Desktops

– Notebook Replication Seamless / Outlook

Anywhere

• Old Email Stored In PST Files

– User Based Extra Email Storage

– Either Locally Or On Network Shares

– Personal Copies (Just In Case)

– What Storage Limitations?

– What Retention Policy?


A Bit of History: PSTs

• PST History

– Microsoft Outlook Personal Store Files

– User managed via Outlook

– Two versions

• Why did PSTs become so popular?

– Easy to use

– Mobile access

– Storage management


History and industry issues

• Enforcement of quotas is old school

– Limited mailbox quotas are counterproductive

• Forces users to create PSTs or pushes users to

do “underground archiving”

– End users will create other repositories in

hotmail/Gmail

• Stubbing can create significant performance

issues

– Store performance is not related to size, but

mailbox items

– Microsoft recommends not using stubbing


PST problems

• No centralized management

– Users control the creation and location of

PSTs

– PST growth is unchecked

• How did PSTs become such a problem?

– Data loss, corruption, infrastructure costs,

more…

– Weak elimination strategies

– User productivity

– No Exchange storage control


PST Legal and Compliance Problems

• PST Legal Problems

– No centralized management

– Manual search

– No retention and disposition / compliance

– No risk analysis


PST Legal and Compliance Problems

• How did lawyers learn to target PSTs?

– Sometimes they are the only record of information

– Enormous risk to organization

– Easily transported

– Smoking Gun…


Most requested information

Source: American College of Trial Lawyers, Interim Report on the Joint Project of The American College of Trial Lawyers Task Force

on Discovery and the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System, August 1, 2008.

Source: ESG Research Report, E-Discovery Requirements Escalate, November 2007


Most requested information

Source: American College of Trial Lawyers, Interim Report on the Joint Project of The American College of Trial Lawyers Task Force

on Discovery and the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System, August 1, 2008.

Source: ESG Research Report, E-Discovery Requirements Escalate, November 2007


How to preserve information

• Leverage an archive properly

– A backup is not an archive

– Ensure you capture all the data you need

– Set retention and keep privacy rules in mind

– Use an archiving solution to help out with

storage management of Exchange

– Don't forget PST files


There are No Good Reasons to have PST files

• To make it clear once and for all, here is a list of

reasons why there are no good reason to have PST

files in a corporate environment anymore

– You cannot apply retention or legal hold to PST files

– eDiscovery request are nearly impossible to

accomplish as they require searching, discovery and

manually opening and searching all the content in

them.

– PST files are quite often used when employees leave

organizations to take their mail data with them to a

competitor. They can store them on an MP3 player

and walk out of the door which is a huge security risk

for data leakage.



- They are difficult to find except if you use appropriate PST

crawlers.

- They’re fragile, especially as they get big. They get

corrupted too easily. Users aren’t the best at ensuring that

their systems are properly shut down.

- Your users don’t back them up. Presumably you do back

up the server.

- Your users don’t compact them. They just get bigger and

bigger.

- Your users forget their PST passwords. Even though there

are unsupported tools to crack them, it can take a

significant amount of time to do so.



- You lose single instance store (SIS) as messages take up

more space in a PST than in an Exchange store.

- It’s simply crazy to store PSTs on a network drive. They

just end up taking up more space. Is disk space on your

file server cheaper than disk space on your Exchange

server? (besides that Microsoft doesn’t support PST files

on a File Share)

- For road warriors, OSTs is a superior storage technique.

They allow untethered computing at a higher level than

with PSTs, plus with the added security of a backed-up

information store on the server.



- A PST can be opened by only one machine at a time. This

precludes a manager and assistant from working from the

same PST simultaneously, and precludes team access.

- You cannot use Outlook Web Access to read your

downloaded messages.

- PST files are not secure. Anyone with access to the PST

file can open it using the right tools.

- You cannot clean up PST files after virus infestations.


And now on to the good part

- Now that we know what is bad

- How do you get rid of PST files?

- Out of the box tools are limited


PST Elimination Strategies

1Write a project plan

– What to do about data from employees that have left

the company?

– What about password protection?

– Write out all the risks and actions as it will save time


2Prevent further growth of the problem

– Download the Office 2007 Administrative Templates

(ADM files) from

http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=78161

– There is a specific ADM file for Outlook that contains

group policy settings that can be configured especially

for Managing PST files.


http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=78161


3Discover all existing PSTs

– Find all the PST files in the network

– If you run scripts to do this, ensure you don’t do an all

out search as it will saturate your network

– Located on servers, tapes, laptops, and workstations

– How to deal with remote users?




4Store PST data in an archive

– Bring the data under centralized management

– Reason for not bringing it into Exchange is that most

likely you won’t have the storage available for it

– Allows for setting proper retention, eDiscovery, risk

management and early case assessment


5Access for end users

– Give end users access to the archived data

– End users need access to their data for productivity

reasons



6Avoid creating stub files

– Stub files are shortcuts in the mailbox pointing to the

archived item

– Can create major problems on Exchange with

whitespace, fragmentation, and major I/O overhead



7Disable PST creation

- Well, what good is it to bring everything in and not

stop the end users from creating them again?

- Leverage Microsoft system management (GPO)

policies to restrict users from creating PST files which

can be downloaded from

http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=78161



So What To Do About PST’s

• Set Retention and Usage Policies

• Identify, Quantify

• Lock-down 1: No New PST’s

– Via Group Policy

• Consolidate

– Organizations May Require More Than

Exchange 2010 Archiving Can Provide

– Enterprise Need For Business Level Archive

– Process And Auto-Tools To Find And Import PST’s

• Lock-down 2: No PST’s Allowed

– Again Via Group Policy

• Finally, Own The Life Cycle


Is it that simple?

• PST discovery challenges

• Archive storage challenges

• End user access challenges


PST discovery challenges

• First problem is that you are unaware of the size of

the problem

• There are no adequate native tools available

• Blunt force crawlers might cause problems by

overloading the network with searches


Archive storage challenges

• Without knowing the size of the problem sizing the

archive can be a challenge

• Ensure that the archive and indexes can grow to the

size you expect

• The bigger the indexes, the slower the response times

could be

• Distinguish between a business record and private data

can be difficult


End user access challenges

• End users have saved the data for a reason

• Restricting access can reduce productivity and

effectiveness

• End users want access to data transparently even when

they work remotely or disconnected from the network


Important “Take Aways”

1. PSTs are too risky for any organization

2. Plan PST elimination strategy carefully

3. Avoid “stub” files that will negatively impact

Outlook performance

4. User productivity can be improved

5. Take back control of Exchange storage using the

archive

6. Block PST file creation


Suggested resources

http://www.autonomy.com/

http://www.microsoft.com/exchange

http://www.thesedonaconference.org

http://www.mimosasystems.com/



http://www.microsoft.com/exchange

http://www.thesedonaconference.org/


Questions ?

[email protected]

Questions?

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Effectively managing your email - how to eliminate PST