Dual NIC network traffic plus?

[jorsak]

I was just curious. I have a user who has a large PST file. We've narrowed it down as much as possible but it still is 1.7GB. Would there be a benefit in putting dual NIC's in the server, splitting the PST into 2 sections, mapping to each NIC separately by IP to create two different drives and putting each PST in a folder that was mapped to those individual drives?

IE.

SERVER NIC #1 = IP 192.168.0.1

SERVER NIC #2 = IP 192.168.0.2

Mapped Drive #1 = PSTDATA on 192.168.0.1 (Y:)

Mapped Drive #2 = PSTDATA on 192.168.0.2 (Z:)

in the PST Data folder would be A-G.pst and H-Z.pst (or something along those lines.)

Would this increase bandwidth / speed in opening the PST file? Would this decrease bandwidth load for other users?

Just curious. many thanks,

Joe

[tguy]

Is this giant .PST file in a roaming profile and therefore downloaded everywhere the user logs on? Or is this a mobile user with a laptop who is in and out of the office and/or not always connected to the network?

A couple of ideas come to mind. Why not move the .PST file to the server and have the user open it from there? Then there is no need to download the file every time, even if you do split it up.

Another option to increase throughput to the server would be to team the NIC's. If you have two NIC's from the same vendor, say Intel or Broadcom, you can team them together to appear as one NIC with twice the throughput. Or you could load balance etc.

The best option would seem to be leaving the .PST file on the server and accessing it directly from there. If the user indeed does travel a lot, maybe he/she could use VPN or other remote access to check mail in the office??

As a last resort, I would try and copy that giant file all the time even if it is split in two.

Hope this helps.

tguy

[jorsak]

Thanks for the thoughts. Yes, there's a giant .PST on the server. The user has a Desktop and a laptop. She also uses laplink to sync the files when she leaves and comes back. It's running ok. I just wanted to look at what I could do to improve the speed of accessing the file. It was slow opening attachments and such. Actually it was unvelievably slow but that turned out to be a corrupt domain account. I rejoined it to the domain and now she's accessing files nice and fast again. That's what got me looking into this in the first place.

I was thinking that 2 NIC's would be acheap and fast way to expand server bandwitdh. I could get a gigabit NIC and Switch but there's a little more expense involved there so the 1 NIC and load balancing or something similar seemed cheap and effective.

Thanks again,

Joe

[knight_dkn]

Usually in this case when email files get that large, it's time for MS Exchange. By using exchange all the email data and files stay on the server and is accesed dynamically by each outlook program. This basically means that only the part of the PST file that is being used is transfered back and forth. This will solve your bandwidth problem and make managing you email system much easier. Additionaly if the user is on the road alot they can use Explorer to get into a web-mail style interface to check their emails.

Have a look: MS Exchange 2003