DISA cracks down on email storage
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The Defense Information Systems Agency will be enforcing the enterprise email storage limits in an effort to make the Army system as a whole more faster and efficient.
The Defense Information Systems Agency recently announced that it will be coming down harder on users who use too much email storage. Effective Oct. 1, DISA will enforce the existing Department of Defense Enterprise Email (DEE) service-level agreement mailbox size limit, which DISA says will lower costs and improve efficiency and Microsoft Outlook start-up times.
DISA has not enforced storage limits for users in two categories: the basic class, into which most users fall, and which a maximum storage capacity of 512MB; and the business class, which allows for 4GB of storage. Despite the majority of the Army’s more than 1.4 million DEE account users abiding by the declared email storage limits, DISA discovered that as recently as July 31, 2015, 75,000 Army personnel were storing more than 4 GB of mail. More than 7,700 user mailboxes exceeded 10GB. So much email storage negatively affects the entire Army system, rendering it slower and thus inefficient.
An auto-generated warning will now appear for those at risk of exceeding their storage limits -- warnings for basic users will appear at 410MB, while warnings for business users will appear at 3.7GB. For those whose warnings go unheeded, a second warning will be sent advising that they will not be able to send emails until space is cleared. If an archive continues to grow – beyond 700MB for basic users and 4.6GB for business users – a third and final warning will be sent informing those users that they will no longer be able to receive messages until space is cleared. A non-delivery notification will be sent to those sending mail to an outsized account.
“The warning emails serve as a heads-up for users, to remind them to clear out extra emails before their mailbox size starts to impact their ability to use the email system,” said John Howell, product director, Enterprise Content Collaboration and Messaging.
Users can still store files they had previously, just not in Outlook inboxes, DISA noted. Emails can be stored in personal folders on local drives. “We have resources and information available to help individuals who aren't sure how to get a handle on their email's storage issues,” Howell said.
This article was changed Aug. 18 to correct John Howell's title.
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