Limit zdb size?

[batfastad]

Hi guys

This is pretty wishful thinking but I was wondering if it's possible to limit the size of the .zdb file?

We had all our users using Outlook with Exchange which obviously worked well. We've got a few users with pretty monster mailboxes (~5-8GB with 10,000+ messages in single folders!)

This is causing them to have big .zdb files which can't be good for performance.
Also having to resync the zdb after upgrade/restore is pretty brutal.

I've thought about switching these users to Thunderbird/IMAP as that could make things a bit easier but the users in question are not particularly computer-literate so the thought of teaching them something new fills me with violence

Is there a way to limit the size of the .zdb file to say 1GB?

Or another way round it would be to only storing the last 30/60/whatever number of days' mail in the zdb, and anything older is just the headers

Cheers, B

[fsiegel]

As you said, syncing just the headers would help. Of course, archiving a lot of the data will help as well. You can manually compact the ZDBs from within Zimbra. Also, in future versions, you will be able to choose which folders you sync, and how much data.

[batfastad]

Hi fsiegel. Thanks for the reply.
Interesting info. Yeah it would be amazing if ZCO could just manage the zdb size a bit more so the admin just sets the "offline" limit in days/file size and for anything older than those limits it just keeps the headers.

EDIT: Another excellent feature would be to disable caching as much as possible, so the user is effectively working live on their mailbox. This is how Outlook was set up with Exchange pre SBS 2003 for us, though it probably isn't possible with a 3rd party connector.

How far in the future are we talking for these features?
6.0.7 or ZCS v7?

Cheers, B

[fsiegel]

I don't believe the new syncing choices will be in 6.0.7. More likely 7, but we might be able to get something in sooner. Also, in the current version, if the number of messages dips by 20% or so, you will be automatically prompted whether you want to compact your zdb. Realize though, that it can take a lot of time (example: a 2G mailbox reduced by 15 or 20% can take about half an hour).

[batfastad]

Hi fsiegel. Thanks for the info.
Are there any bugzilla entries relating to this that I should vote on?

Cheers, B

[fsiegel]

12790, 20831

[batfastad]

Fantastic, thanks
EDIT: Though those bugs don't really do what I was hoping. Guess we'll have to wait and see

[snissen]

Why not use Outlook archiving? For my mail, I enabled archiving on some folders, with different characteristics on each, going to a few different .pst external mail folders. Older mail gets moved to these other mailboxes, which are still included in indexes for searching.

To do this for a community of users, you could decide on a policy (e.g., archiving everything older than 90 days) and enable it by default. Then, if you chose, you could help individual users make custom changes, either for their whole mailboxes or for individual folders.

You can also use Outlook archiving to delete instead of archive. I have my Trash folders deleting everything older than a week.

These policies, along with frequent (~ weekly) compression, keep my .zdb file under 3GB, which makes it fast and easy to work with. Sande

[batfastad]

Although what you say makes sense, I'm not a huge fan of Outlook auto-archive being a solution to limit the size of a zdb.
Another solution to limit the size of the zdb... tell the user to delete some old mail.

I think being able to limit the zdb by specifying a size of the amount of dowloaded mail and/or a date after which it's only headers would be a really excellent option.

So I've created this RFE to suggest it...
Bug 47759 – Limit .zdb size by specifying downloaded mail size limit and downloaded mail days limit
Get voting!

[waynelouis]

If I understand it correctly, according to this thread (zdb file size limit), deleting emails won't make that file size smaller.