Outlook Support at a remote office

The following is a little something something that I wrote up today for a customer that someone might find value in. They wanted to know what it would take to support Outlook clients at a remote office. The big gem in this document is me recommending that you consider a remote Outlook 2007 user as a 10KB bandwidth drain for the WAN.

Feasibility Statement

XXXXX requested XXXXX evaluate the feasibility of supporting 50 Outlook users at a remote office that does not have an Exchange server onsite. The users will connect to Exchange 2007 over the WAN. After review of XXXX’s network diagrams, and discussing with XXX staff SuperBrainKevin has determined that there is adequate bandwidth to support the 50 users if the following conditions are met:

1. All of the remote users are running Outlook 2007
   
2. Outlook 2007 is configured to operate in Cached mode
   
3. 500Kb of available bandwidth is present during peak hours (mornings and lunch time)
   
   1. 500Kb is the bandwidth recommended to support 50 users (figured at; 10k average usage per user Xs 50 users)
      
4. Remote users interacting with locally attached PST files only. PST files should never be accessed over the WAN. Outlook will connect to the PST with RPC calls and utilize all available WAN bandwidth to access the file.
   

Further Considerations

When implementing remote Outlook over a WAN there are a number of items that need to be considered to ensure the best possible user experience. Consider the following:

• The largest bandwidth impact will happen during seed mailbox cache. The first time Outlook attaches to the Exchange server it has to copy the contents of the entire mailbox locally to an OST file.
  
• The next largest bandwidth impact will happen on subsequently seeds after extended periods of down time. For example when everyone comes into the office on Monday and turns their computers on. Outlook has to download into the OST file all of the mail received on the server over the weekend. If users complain about bandwidth, generally they will complain on a Monday morning
  
• After the seed of the OST file, file size / Exchange mailbox size has no impact on bandwidth requirements.
  

UPDATE *** Even better then my information http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc540453.aspx#ClientNet

Thanks Mr. Philips