HOW TO: Use System Policies to Configure Public Folder Storage Limits in Exchange 2000 Server

This step-by-step article describes how you can use public folder store policies to manage storage space, indexing, database maintenance and public folder replication. Additionally, this article describes how to apply these policies selectively to one or more public folder stores. System Policies are powerful tools that enable you to apply consistent settings to multiple servers, mailbox stores and public folder stores at one time.

Requirements

The following list outlines the recommended hardware, software, network infrastructure, and service packs that you need:

• Microsoft Windows 2000 Server Service with Pack 2 (SP2)
• Active Directory
• Microsoft Exchange Server 2000 Service with Pack 1 (SP1)

This article assumes that you are familiar with the following topics:

• Exchange System Manager
• The role of administrative groups in Exchange 2000 Server

How to Configure System Policies to Control Public Folder Settings

How to Plan System Policies

Before you implement Public folder system policies, you must understand the areas that policies can configure, which include:

• General settings such as Secure and Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (S/MIME) signatures and message display.
• Database settings such as maintenance intervals.
• Replication policy such as controlling replication times and message limits.
• Storage limits such as public folder sizes, maintenance scheduling and deleted item retention settings.
• Timings for running incremental and full populations of full-text indexes.

You can configure most of the settings that you view on the General, Database, Limits and Full-Text Indexing tabs on the Properties dialog box of all public folder stores.

After you have configured a system policy for public folder management, you can apply that policy to any public folder store in any storage group on any server in an administrative group.

How to Create a System Policies Container

Before you can use system policies, you must turn on the display of administrative groups in Exchange System Manager.

1. Click Start, point to Programs, point to Microsoft Exchange, and then click System Manager.
2. Right-click the Organization Name (Exchange) icon at the top of the tree (where Organization Name is the name that you selected for your Exchange 2000 organization), and then click Properties.
3. Click the Display administrative groups check box.
   
   Optionally, you can also click the Display Routing Groups check box; however, this is not required to set administrative permissions.
4. Click OK.
5. Restart Exchange System Manager, and then confirm that a new object named "Administrative Groups" is displayed in the left pane.
6. Expand Administrative Groups, and then expand the administrative group to which you want to add the policy.
7. If you do not already have a System Policies folder, right-click the respective administrative group, point to New, and then click System Policy Container.

How to Create a Public Folder Store Policy

1. Right-click the newly created System Policies folder, point to New, and then click Public store policy.
2. In New Policy, click to select the check boxes for the elements that you want this policy to configure.
   
   The example in this article assumes that you select all of the following check boxes:
   • General
   • Database
   • Replication
   • Limits
   • Full-Text Indexing
3. In the Properties dialog box, on the General tab, type the name of your new system policy.
   
   Microsoft recommends that you use a name that describes the policy, for example, System Policy for Default Public Folder Stores.
4. On the General (Policy) tab, set the following options:
   1. Click Clients support S/MIME signatures, if all of the client computers connecting to public folder stores support S/MIME digital signing such as Microsoft Outlook Express.
   2. Click Display plain-text messages in a fixed-size font.
      
      Use this setting if users report that messages are not displaying properly.
      
      NOTE: This procedure forces client computers to display plain-text messages in a fixed-size font such as Courier.
5. Click the Database (Policy) tab, click a time when you want online compaction to run or click Customize.
   
   If you select a maintenance interval for the public folder stores that are governed by this policy, this time determines when online compaction runs.
6. If you click Customize either click a day in the left column, and then click a time on the top row or drag the mouse pointer to select the times that you want to defragment the store.
   
   NOTE: To configure the schedule to display in hour increments or in 15-minute increments, click the appropriate option under Detail View.
7. After you have selected suitable maintenance times, click OK.
8. Click the Replication (Policy) tab. In the Replication interval list, either click a time from the list provided when you want the warning messages to be generated or click the Customize button. Note that the default setting is Always run.
   
   NOTE: The Replication tab is not displayed unless you install Exchange 2000 Server SP1 or later.
9. If you click Customize either click a day in the left column, and then click a time on the top row or drag the mouse pointer to select the times that you want to defragment the store.
   
   NOTE:To configure the schedule to display in either hour increments or in 15-minute increments click the appropriate option under Detail View.
10. After you have selected the warning message interval times, click OK.
11. Under Limits, type a value in the Replication interval for always (minutes) dialog box to limit replication frequency when the replication interval is set to Always run.
    
    NOTE: Microsoft recommends that you do not reduce this setting to less than 15 minutes, unless you are using it for testing purposes.
12. In the Replication message size limit (KB) dialog box type a size to which you want to limit replication messages. This means that messages smaller than that figure are aggregated (combined) and messages larger than that figure are reduced into the same size chunks. If you have fast reliable links, you can increase the size of the replication messages and conversely, if you have slow and unreliable links, you may want to reduce this figure.
    
    
13. The Restore Defaults button enters values of 15 minutes and 300KB for these values, which are the recommended settings for 10 megabyte (MB) local area networks (LANs).
14. Click the Limits (Policy) tab, and then select one or all of the following checkboxes under Storage limits.
    • Issue warning at (KB): Select this check box to warn you when the maximum space the store can occupy has been reached.
    • Prohibit post at (KB): Select this check box to prohibit posting messages that are larger than a size that you specify.
    • Maximum item size (KB): Select this check box to limit the size of items that may be stored in the public folder.
    To configure any or all of these restrictions, click to select the check boxes next to Issue warning at (KB), Prohibit post at (KB), or Maximum item size (KB) as required. Type the value that you want, in kilobytes (KB) for the corresponding item. Base these values on the usage of the majority of public folders hosted in this store. For example, type 20000 in the Issue warning at (KB) box, and then type 100 in the Maximum item size (KB) box for a message-based public folder store. Either click the time that you want the warning messages to be generated in the Warning message interval list or click Customize.
    
    
15. If you click Customize, either click a day in the left column, and then click a time on the top row or drag the mouse pointer to select the times that you want.
    
    NOTE: To configure the schedule to display in hour increments or in 15-minute increments, click the appropriate option under Detail View.
16. After you configure the warning message interval times, click OK.
17. Set a deletion item retention time for messages deleted from the public folders under Deletion settings. Microsoft recommends that you set deletions to 14 days for public folders. This is because messages that are deleted from public folders are not moved to the deleted items folder. Therefore, you want to have the ability to recover individual posts without restoring the public folder store.
    
    
18. If you want to configure age limits on a public folder, click to select the Age limit for all folders in this store (days) check box, and then enter a value in days. Therefore, items posted to this instance of the configured folder expire after the number of days that you specify. 90 days is a common value to use with folder expiry. However, you must not set folder expiry on a folder that contains contacts or calendar items.
    
    
19. Click the Full-Text Indexing (Policy) tab. Under the option for Update Interval list, either click a time that you want to run an incremental update of the full-text index from the list or click the Customize button.
20. If you click Customize, either click a day in the left column, and then click a time on the top row or drag the mouse pointer to select the times that you want to perform an incremental update of the index.
    
    NOTE: To configure the schedule to display in hour increments or in 15-minute increments click the appropriate option under Detail View.
21. After you configure the indexing times, click OK.
22. Perform the same procedure for the Rebuild interval setting. A rebuild performs a complete re-indexing of the search catalog. The recommended setting is to run a rebuild one time a week at midnight on Saturday or Sunday.
23. After you finish configuring settings for this public folder policy, click OK.

How to Apply a Public Folder Policy to a Public Folder Store

To apply the public folder policy that you have just created to one or more public folder stores, follow these steps:

1. Right-click the system policy that you have just created, and then click Add Public Store.
2. Double-click each public folder store that you want this policy to control, and then click OK.
3. When you receive a message that prompts you to confirm that you want to add the items to the policy, click Yes.
4. The public folder stores display in the right pane of Exchange System Manager.

How to Apply a Policy Immediately

To apply a policy immediately, right-click the policy in the left pane in Exchange System Manager, and then click Apply now. Alternatively, the policy is applied the next time the Recipient Update Service (RUS) runs.

How to Confirm That the System Policy is Assigned

To confirm that the system policy has been assigned:

1. Open the properties of one of the public folder stores to which you applied the policy. Notice that the items that you have configured in the policy are unavailable (appears dimmed) on the property sheets of the Public Folder Store.
2. Open the properties of a public folder store on which you applied the new system policy, and then click the Policies tab. A list of all of the policies that apply to that particular public folder store are displayed, with one entry per property page that you configured on that policy.
3. Click the System Policies object in Exchange System Manager and in the right pane a list of policies and the time that they were last applied is displayed.

Troubleshooting

You can only associate a public folder store with more than one policy if the two policies do not include the same property page, which is to prevent any policy conflicts that may occur.

For more information about how to configure public folder store system policies in Exchange 2000, see the Exchange 2000 Server Resource Kit and Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server Help.

For additional information about how to create system policies in Exchange 2000 Server, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: