How does Exchange Office365 & Outlook deal with large accounts?

[CyBeRkId2002]

Hi all,

 

Currently looking to make the switch to cloud exchange and wondered how well the full desktop client handles particularly large email accounts? I am thinking of those with huge email archives.

 

I suppose my main questions are:

 

• Are emails downloaded to profiles at logon or do they remain on the server?
  
• If they are downloaded where do they go? How well do they deal with roaming profiles?
  
• How responsive is the client... particularly with day-to-day navigation, searching etc.
  
• 
  

 

Any other help and advice people can provide would be hugely appreciated. Mainly looking to see if their are any downsides to making the switch from a functionality and ease of use point of view other than losing access if our internet connection goes down.

 

Cheers,

Michael

[CyBeRkId2002]

anyone?

[Edu-IT]

Mail stays on the server I believe although you can set it to download locally too depending on your preference. How large is large?

 

http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/outlook-help/about-cached-exchange-mode-HP001000067.aspx

Edited May 28, 2014 by Edu-IT

[steveg]

It caches the most recent x amount of emails locally (but still remain on the server) and then if you do a search or something, it gives you the option to continue searching on the server. I have a pretty large mailbox (35,000 items) and it seems to cope fine.

 

Not sure where it stores the local copy, but would assume this is in the profile - we don't use roaming profiles so never been an issue, and staff primarily use the same machine to access emails, so once it has downloaded the local copy its pretty quick. The first time you use it on a new pc with out the local cache its a bit slow for a few mins.

 

Steve

[Boredguy]

The OST file is stored in the local profile, but it only downloads as many months worth of e-mails at a time as you configured.

 

I've got it set to 1 month for our staff via GPO and also relocated the OST to a central stored area and not the local profile so it does not have to re-create itself every time they logon since we clear profiles at logoff (and limits them to 1 copy of outlook open at once which is handy)

 

Some of our staff have 5Gb mailboxes already and not had any issues with Outlook 2013 or OWA to access them

[the_dude]

the only hit is when you first set it up and it kicks off the caching...we have some users over 10GB. This would depend on your internet speed of course. We have 1GB and it is hardly noticeable. I think when you switch from local to cloud it re-uses the same ost so it doesn't have to kick off the caching.

[CyBeRkId2002]

cheers for the replies...

@Boredguy - you have covered my main worry really of redownloading at each logon (or worse... it being stored in the Roaming Profile!). How have you redirected it? Is it a GP setting?

[Boredguy]

I use both a GPO setting and a reg key in GPP to ensure the users OST gets redirected since Office 2013 doesn't really support it.

 

Been working happily here though since September.