No more hiding in the server room
Archiving
As data is the lifeblood of all businesses, keeping it for the long term is a growing problem...... sorry for the pun.
We're always looking at new technology and techniques for storing our data in an accessible manner for anywhere from seven to thirty years depending on project and policy compliance.
For data we use dedicated storage servers replicating between sites to remove single point of failure. Their sole role is to store archive data for as long as possible and as such their are very restrictive access controls and share permissions.
E-mail is a nightmare though! In the past all we could do was export to PST and then throw them on the data archive servers but this is a complete pain and fraught with issues.
So how do you guys do it in the real world?
We're always looking at new technology and techniques for storing our data in an accessible manner for anywhere from seven to thirty years depending on project and policy compliance.
For data we use dedicated storage servers replicating between sites to remove single point of failure. Their sole role is to store archive data for as long as possible and as such their are very restrictive access controls and share permissions.
E-mail is a nightmare though! In the past all we could do was export to PST and then throw them on the data archive servers but this is a complete pain and fraught with issues.
So how do you guys do it in the real world?
Views: 37
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Jason Short on -
I've had a pretty good experience with GFI Mailarchiver. For the most part it seems to "just work". (Knock on wood - I probably just set myself up for a massive failure :) )
http://www.gfi.com/mailarchiver
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Permalink Reply by Isaac on -
For email archiving, we , uhh , don’t.
I hate PST files with the fiery passion of ten thousand suns because they’re always getting corrupted, or the users mistakes a PST for their inbox (prompting frantic phone calls), outlook autoarchive creates them in the stupidest places so they don’t get backed up, they don’t sync well with offline files, can’t see them in OWA, etc … However the idea of email quotas is anathema to our end users so we just keep tossing more space at Exchange (my storage vendor loves that part, btw) so eventually we end up with mailboxes like these:
These aren’t even our biggest, incidentally. It’s only a matter of time before this all comes crashing down in an orgy of tears, lost email, anddrinkingtherapy.
We’re still on Exchange 2003 but I’m planning on deploying Exchange 2010 next year. We’re really excited about the new archiving and retention stuff in Exchange 2010 and we’ll be making heavy use of them. Hopefully most of these problems will go away at that time, or at least be greatly reduced.
So in conclusion here is my current plan for email archiving …
10 do nothing
20 email mailboxes fill allocated space
30 buy more storage for exchange
40 IF NOT EX2010 = “deployed” GOTO 10
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Permalink Reply by Wesley "Nonapeptide" on
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Permalink Reply by Graycat on -
Ah, the ever lovely mailbox size reports. Don't worry though - I've got one site with it's own Exch03 server which is bouncing at the 50Gb mark for the private store......... for less than a dozen people. :oS
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Permalink Reply by Michael Francis on -
Hi
You must look at Red Gate Software - Exchange Server Archiver. Unlike most email archivers (including GFI), the end-user experience is completely transparent. Plus it doesn't use journaling (unlike GFI) so no data duplication nightmare (in fact, quite the opposite).
Plus Red Gate has a PST Importing tool too - bingo!
Check them out at http://www.red-gate.com/products/Exchange/index.htm. There is a free 30-day trial with full technical support.
(The PST Importer tool is at http://www.red-gate.com/products/PST_Importer/index.htm)
Regards
Michael
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Permalink Reply by Elizabeth Ayer on
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I'm sure Michael meant to put in the disclaimer that he (and I) work for Red Gate....
And now, in the interest of fairness, I'll mention a few others that we come across when we're out talking to Sys Admins.
Symantec is really the 800lb gorilla in the area. The Symantec product, Enterprise Vault, is considered mature, robust, and it is highly configurable. EV can be a bit heavyweight (and expensive) for smaller businesses, but because it occupies the most established position, it is often considered the 'safe' option.
GFI is generally viewed as the budget option, but in many environments, as Jason says, it just works. We have encountered some misunderstandings in the field about how GFI works (not saying this is GFI's fault at all), so, as for any of these products, you should probably take care over the technical assessment.
Most of them work pretty much the same: either they require journaling and just talk to the journaling mailbox or they communicate through standard interfaces (eg. MAPI) to the Exchange server to take data off the server. There is only one that I know of that uses a completely different technology, and that's Mimosa, which reads off transaction logs instead. Cool, but it has its own challenges.
Others that have a healthy and broad market presence are Metalogix (aka Sunbelt aka exchange@PAM), Quest, C2C, and CommVault.
In fact, I 'm something of a 'trainspotter' of archiving -- I know of 59 on-premise software solutions, and that's not to mention various appliances and cloud-based solutions like MessageLabs!
One thing that's for sure is that there is nobody really dominating the market. This is especially clear if you look up the Gartner 'magic quadrant' report on the subject.
So let's hear from more of you on the network... what do you use? What have you used in the past? Good, bad or ugly?
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59? Not counting appliances and cloud archiving?
You're the World's Most Impressive Exchange Archiving Blogger waiting to happen.
59?? Really?!
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Hey, we all have to have hobbies.
59. Not counting appliances and services. Can we say, 'crowded market,' kids?
(There may be a few which are the same product under the marketing -- I certainly haven't actually investigated them all!!)
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Hmmm... so you've done the research so we don't have to. Ever thought about doing an in-depth exposè (or is it exposé?) of each one?
Or maybe an "Ask Elizabeth Hour" on Exchange archiving. What about Athena archiver? Metalogix's transparent archiver? Vorpalblade's Exchange siphon?
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Permalink Reply by Christian Dinh on
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Isaac, I thought I had one of biggest mailboxes on Exchange 2003 at 6gb. Good luck to you before the upgrade to 2010. As far as handling email storage, I've deployed a product from Quest Software's Archive Manager (http://www.quest.com/archive-manager/). It utilizes a service rather than installing agent on Exchange & AD to query user objects. It does have a journaling feature in the case you want to ensure all inbound/outbound emails are archived/retained.
I used to have similar mailboxes size as Isaac and since I deployed Archive Manager, I've set mailbox quota @ 500mb. Add't set the ArchiveManager policy to delete all emails (in Exchange) that are older than 6-mos. On top of that, (depend on the company policy) I've set a retention policy that deletes all emails older than 12-mos (of course emails that have been archived and stored in the Archive Manager database).
Sometimes in IT, you have to take the stand that although storage is getting cheaper everyday, if you have an unlimited data storage, your server(s) will essentially crash due to heavy I/O. This was my argument/proposal to my boss that led to the implementation of Archive Manager. Good luck and let me know if you need add't info.
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At the last major place I worked at, we had on the order of 600 mailboxes. We used Nearpoint's Mimosa and were quite happy with it's transparency with the userbase. The big issue was that the lecturers and anyone with a mass of acronyms after their name (My MCSE just never stacked up very well against those guy's Ph.D.s) usually had tons of PDF attachments in their emails as well as pictures. Mimosa plucked the attachments out of Exchange and left stubs in the original emails which pointed to the Mimosa database. No one really complained - except maybe the IT director concerning the price. I think the price was fair though. Not a steal, by any means.
My reaction when dealing with a place that doesn't have money for a archiving solution is to let Exchange bloat. If it gets bad, I'll tell users to cull their oldest emails out and put it in a PST file. I then explain to them the dangers of PSTs. When bad stuff happens with the PSTs I can say I warned them and offer them a chipper haiku:
PST is fail
Here's a tissue; weep and gnash
Have a super day!
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Permalink Reply by Graycat on
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Cheers for the replies, guys.
I must admit I was shocked by how many people don't do any archiving of e-mails at all! I'd hate to be in their shoes as / when their Exchange server dies.
We use public folders extensively for project related e-mails and are currently running at about 1.2Tb over all the servers for those stores alone.
The private stores though can be equally huge and it's not unusual to see mailboxes well over 5Gb. Case in point - our Edinburgh office has eleven (11) users and a private store of about 20Gb at the moment. I'm not convinced that they've got that much data on their file servers!! :o) lol
We've had a look at a few different options so far but an externally hosted Enterprise Vault system is getting my vote. I've had a look at offerings from Mimecast and Google but as they're sitting between us and the world, they take no account for the 2Tb+ of existing e-mails we need archiving. Not to mention the PSTs already in existence!
Thanks for the tips on the Red Gate system etc. I'll checking them out as part of the next review ...... which will probably happen after my next holiday :o) lol
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