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Information Services Investigates Ways to Trim E-mail Storage Costs

Return to Issue of May 11, 2009

Tom Beitl

Kent State's Division of Information Services has launched an initiative to reduce the expenses of storing e-mail in the Microsoft Exchange system. The effort is part of the division's ongoing endeavors to trim costs while improving service to the university community.

At Kent State, the average faculty or staff member's e-mailbox grows approximately 65 percent each year. E-mail storage results in significant expense to the university. Today, nearly 27 percent of the university's total server storage environment is dedicated to Exchange.

If growth rates continue at current levels, the cost to maintain the system will swell to more than six times the current annual amount over the next four years.

"E-mail storage is especially costly because of its high-performance needs," says Tom Beitl, executive director for infrastructure and operations. "E-mail must be readily accessible and quickly recoverable, which requires high-quality server storage.

"For this reason, we’'e seeking a long-term approach that controls current growth rates while ensuring the unique data protection, retrieval and recovery needs of the university," Beitl says.

For optimal performance and response time, it is generally recommended that individuals keep their mailboxes under 2 GB in total size. In Outlook, you can locate the size of your mailbox by clicking on the "Tools" menu, selecting "Mailbox Cleanup" and choosing "Mailbox Size." Entourage users should look under the "Edit" menu, select "Folder Properties" and then click on the "Storage" tab.

There are steps every individual can take to manage the size of his or her mailbox. Following are general tips and best practice recommendations:

• Review your mailbox weekly to delete items that you no longer need.
• Delete items daily from your "Junk E-mail" folder.
• Set your mailbox to erase permanently the messages in your "Deleted Items" folder when you log out of the system. Go to "Tools" and then "Options" in Outlook. You can set this preference by clicking the box in the "Other" tab.
• Save to your hard drive any e-mail attachments you'd like to keep, and then delete the e-mail. E-mail attachments are often the largest component of a mailbox's size, with 83 percent of storage consumed just by attachments.
• Avoid sending unnecessary attachments. Save the file to a shared network drive and include the link to its location in your e-mail instead.
• Avoid carbon copying (cc) yourself on messages you draft. This step is unnecessary since a copy of every message is saved automatically in your "Sent Items" folder.
• Think before automatically responding to everyone on a listserv or departmental e-mail group. Your message may be better directed to just one person or to a smaller subset of the list.

For more e-mail tips, visit the Information Services Web site.

Return to Issue of May 11, 2009