This article contains guidance on the limitations of using of personal folders (.pst) files over a local area network (LAN) or wide area network (WAN) link. Note that .pst files are not meant to be a long-term, continuous-use method of storing messages in an enterprise environment.
Recently, we have got couple of issues with one of our customer who kept their pst files (around 2000+ users only) over the network. DFS Replication also started getting numerous issues because of file handles operating system puts over that .pst gets once its accessed over the LAN/WAN. Consequently the VSS configured on those File Servers (DFS) also got the snapshots inflated due to high volume of activity on DFSRPrivate/ Staging area and there is no method that we can find to exclude that folder from snapshots being taken for VSS. This is also not supported by Microsoft.
What happens when you keep PST files and access it over the N/W:-
A PST file is a file-access-driven method of message storage. File-access-driven means that the computer uses special file access commands that the operating system provides to read and write data to the file. So even if there is a small change in the .pst file the complete file is being replicated and modified over the network through DFS-R. Consider the number of times the pst is accessed for around 2000+ users in the office hours.
This is not efficient on WAN or LAN links because WAN and LAN links use network-access-driven methods. These are commands that the operating system provides to send data to, or receive from, another networked computer. If there is a remote .pst file (over a network link), Outlook tries to use the file commands to read from the file or write to the file. However, the operating system must then send those commands over the network because the file is not located on the local computer. This creates lots of overhead and increases the time that is required to read and write to the file. Additionally, the use of a .pst file over a network connection may result in a corrupted .pst file if the connection degrades or fails. Consequently following issues may be experienced:-
A) Write operations can take approximately four times longer than read operations.
B) Outlook has slower performance than the Web Access Exchange Client.
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