One of the things I pride myself on is my ability to break down the complexity of computers into simple everyday descriptions.  When I was asked to describe the problem that we are experiencing on our Exchange Server here is what I came up with:

All the e-mail at the university is stored in a database in an exchange environment.  This sort of database is similar to a file drawer in your desk that contains hanging file folders.  Each account is a hanging file folder and each e-mail is a piece of paper in the hanging file folders.  At this point there are so many hanging file folders in our drawer that we cannot remove any, nor can we fit any more in the drawer.  When we remove paper from the file folders, it is simply filled up with more paper in other hanging file folders.  So when the I.T. Department opens the file drawer all we see are hanging file folders.  If people remove paper from their folders, it assures more space for future paper, but there is no way in this current system to change our file system.

It made sense to me, I hope it makes sense to others.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 8th, 2007 at 8:19 am and is filed under email, Help Desk. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.