MailHomes Setup

The MailHomes feature allows a large domain or domains to be split over multiple servers to allow for better disk storage management.

This feature can assist in moving mailboxes from one storage location to another. There is a need to make Database changes in two locations.

Step One

The first database change is within the table 'MailServerProperties'. This new property specifies the location of the available storage to be used for the specified mail account.

• ServiceName            MFldrMgr
• PropertyName        MailHomes
• ServerRoleID         0 (Or dependant on implementation)
• PropType               1 (String Value)
• PropIntValue          NULL
• PropStringValue     1:\\Server1\Mailboxes,3:\\Server2\Mailboxes (Example)

A Definition of MailHomes

*MailHomes* - A comma separated list of mappings from MailHomeId (Numerical representation of the UNC path to the message store) to MailHomes (The full UNC path to the Message Store location). Each entry is of the form [MailHomeId]:[MailHomes], i.e. the property might be: "1:\\Server1\Mailboxes,3:\\Server2\Mailboxes". The value is read when it is first needed, and also when a MailHomeId lookup fails. e.g. if it wants to find the path for MailHomeId 4, and there is no entry for number 4 in the map, then it will re-read this property from the database to see if it has been updated since the original read.

Step Two

Now that we have the Server configuration within the database the next task is to edit the Mailbox properties to point to the relevant storage location.

Within the table 'MailboxProperties' there is a column called MailHomeId. This column contains a number which represents the UNC path to the message store to be used for each mailbox. The full UNC path is then retrieved from the MailHomes property within the 'MailServerProperties' table to allow access to the account.

Definition of what MailHomeId is

*MailHomeId* - By looking this value up in the MAILSERVER_MFLDRMGR_MAILHOMES mail server property you will get back the MailHomes path for this mailbox. This path is the mailbox root directory to use for this mailbox. Note this is not the same as the MailboxDirectory. The MailHomes may be the same for many mailboxes, but the MailboxDirectory but will be different for every mailbox. The MailboxDirectory is derived from MailHomes and is always below it in the folder tree.

Default: If this property is blank, MailSite will use the MailInBoxDir property for this domain.