Storage Management

Overview

As an domain administrator, you need a way to ensure that the cumulative storage used by the SkyConnect domains does not cross a certain threshold as decided by your organization.

SkyConnect offers more than one way to keep the mailbox storage usage in control.  The strategy to use will depend on your internal policies as well as the mail client used. 

1. For users who access mail via a desktop or mobile client using the POP protocol, we suggest the following
   1. The desktop / mobile clients are configured to leave a copy of the downloaded mail for a limited number of days on the SkyConnect server.
   2. In addition, you configure the SkyConnect domain to automatically delete mail older than a threshold from the mailbox on the server. Since the mails are already downloaded on to the users desktop, even if the mail are deleted from the server, the users will have access to the mail.
2. For users who access mail via a desktop or mobile client using IMAP or the web client, the users should be assigned a maximum quota and the quota overflow policy and implemented on the server. The quota overflow policy is used to ensure that the user keeps the mailbox storage usage within the maximum quota assigned. 
3. If you have configured archiving using Vaultastic, then all mail will be available for future access via the Self Service Portal of Vaultastic. You can then configure the Auto Mail Deletion feature irrespective of the client and protocol used. 

The sections below give the details of using the Admin Panel to view and manage end user storage usage. 

Viewing the storage used by domains and individual mailboxes

Domain Storage

To view the cumulative storage used by all the users in a domain:

1. Log in to the SkyConnect Admin Panel. From the left pane, select the SkyConnect domain from the list of domains. 
2. From the right pane, expand the Storage section. 
3. The Domain Storage Used property will show the cumulative quota used by the domain. Please note that the value of this property is updated periodically. The last update date and time will be displayed.
4. Alternatively, you can subscribe to a storage report from the Admin Panel. The storage report will be sent to your registered email id. Details of subscribing to SkyConnect reports can be found here.

User Storage

To view  the storage used by an individual mail box

1. Log in to the SkyConnect Admin Panel. From the left pane, select the SkyConnect domain from the list of domains. 
2. Click the Users option. The middle pane will show the list of users in the domain.
3. Click on a user in the middle pane. The right pane will show all the user properties.
4. Expand the Storage section.
5. The Storage Used property will show the storage used by the mailbox. 

Allocating and enforcing storage quota for users

1. Log in to the SkyConnect Admin Panel. From the left pane, select the SkyConnect domain from the list of domains. 
2. Click the Users option. The middle pane will show the list of users in the domain.
3. Click on a user in the middle pane. The right pane will show all the user properties.
4. Expand the Storage section.
5. In the Allocated Quota field, enter the maximum storage that can be used by the user. To specify a value in MB, enter value followed by MB. For example a value of 10 MB will allocated a maximum quota of 10 MB. Similarly, you can specify the quota values in KB, and GB.

6. You can enforce the quota limit using the Quota Overflow Policy. If the value chosen for the Quota Overflow Policy is set to Unlimited, then the allocated quota is not enforced. If the policy is BlockSend, then the user will not be able to send mail if his quota has overflowed. 
7. A user for whom the Allocated Quota is a positive value and for whom the Quota Overflow Policy has been set to BlockSend, will receive email alerts when the mailbox usage crosses 60%, 75%, 80%, 90% and 100% of the allocated quota.

Using the Auto mail deletion feature to keep users mailbox size in control

When you allocate and enforce a storage quota on user's mailboxes, then the onus of keeping the size in control is on the users.

An alternate way to keep the sizes in control is to use the Auto mail deletion feature. This feature works on the age of the mail. All mails older than the age defined by the "Auto Mail Deletion After (in days) will be automatically deleted.

To use this feature

• Log in to the SkyConnect Admin Panel. From the left pane, select the SkyConnect domain from the list of domains.

• Expand the Storage section and enable the Auto mail deletion property. When enabled, all expired mail will be automatically deleted from the server.  
• Click Save.
• From the left panel, click the Users option under the domain. The middle pane will show the list of users in the domain.
• Click on a user in the middle pane. The right pane will show all the user properties.
• Expand the Storage section.

Image 2 user level settings



• For the Auto Mail Deletion after (in days) property, specify the number of days after which the mail should be automatically deleted. If the property value set to zero, the message expiry will be disabled and messages will not be deleted.
Example: If you want to maintain only 30 days' emails on SkyConnect, you can set the value to 30 at the user level. This configuration will automatically check for emails older than 30 days on a daily basis and start deleting them from the backend.