As IS manager for the United States Coast Guard Facilities Design and Construction Center Atlantic, Glaser knows about email's dark side. "email is probably the biggest consumer of disk drive space created by man," he said.
Joseph Edwards, a senior network administrator for eLink Communications, an ISP in Bethesda, MD, agreed. "...if you let everyone send any amount of attachments they want and store anything they want in their email, then you're going to have to buy more disk space," said Edwards. Glaser knows email can quickly choke a system. "Its prolific ability to replicate messages and attachments is well known throughout the technology community," he said. The replication happens when one user sends an attachment to each individual in an organisation. In an organisation with 50 users, when one user sends an email with a 10-MB attachment to 49 users, suddenly, the email system is processing 490 MBs of unnecessary information. If more than one user repeats the process, the attachments can cause some serious headaches for IT managers and network administrators. To reduce this type of email glut, Glaser created public system network and Web folders in which users can store attachments. After a user places a document in a folder, he or she simply emails a hyperlink or shortcut to the document instead of attaching it to the email. "This is a simple idea, but (one that's) not heavily utilised by the industry," said Glaser. A financial benefit
Glaser's strategy keeps large numbers of duplicated attachments out of his email servers. The strategy also keeps IT costs low in a number of ways. Using public network folders for attachments:
- Frees up administrators to work on mission-critical projects instead of spending time on the difficult job of hunting down network-clogging attachments. "email even hides large attachments within itself such that network administrators can't easily find these documents for later system-wide disposal," said Glaser.
- Keeps you from buying more disk and server space.
- Frees up space on the email or Microsoft Exchange servers and keeps them clean and running smoothly. "It's always good to keep attachments off of an Exchange server," said TechRepublic systems administrator Michael Laun, who explained that duplicated attachments will hog bandwidth, slow connectivity, and lower the quality of service.
- Decreases the overall manpower you need for server maintenance and backups. "When you start to get a bunch of attachments, your database starts growing uncontrollably large. It takes a long time to back up the database," said Laun.
Setting up public folders for attachments is a simple idea, but persuading users to adopt a new way to use email can be tricky. "It's a training issue," said Laun. The key to user adoption is to start slow and give them time to warm up to a new way of using email. "If you want them to follow the guidelines that you give them, then you have to show them some level of respect or they won't do it," said Laun. "You kind of have to sugarcoat it because no one likes to be told to change their way of doing things," said Edwards. Edwards said if users are shown that a public folder is an efficient way to send and receive information and that clicking on a link to open an attachment is essentially the same as sending it, they will likely use the new method. "It has to be something that is easy for them," said Edwards. If this doesn't work, managers should set guidelines for users to follow. "It becomes such an administrative nightmare over time that it makes no sense to just let things keep getting worse and worse," said Laun. Managers can ease users into certain guidelines by setting size limits on email mailboxes. "As a network administrator, you can kind of be forceful without anybody really knowing," said Edwards. Edwards explained that he can set a 2-MB limit on any mailbox. After a mailbox limit is set, a document above 2 MB can't go out of or through an organisation. That's when Edwards shows users how easy public folders can be. "Users will do it if they know how, generally," said Laun.
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