Email Storage

Anyone know of any decent companies/products to archive the emails for up to 6 years for a 35 user company running Exchange 2003? This isnt something Ive had any dealings with before as we've never had the need to archive all our mails, but now my MD wants to. All help greatly appreciated.

I've not had much experience with Exchange.

Coming from a Linux/unix background, can you not just set Exchange to dump a copy of all inbound/outbound mail (as required) to a different folder, then take this folder as part of your normal backup procedures? This would obviously be cost-effective, as you don't have to pay anything extra.

Most 'email backup' service providers poll your server every few minutes and when down, they're given automatic authority to change your MX records and they act as your server in the mean time to save you loosing information due to bounces.

If they don't request MX rights, you can just add a lower priority one in there, but I've known this to cause complications due to the emails being sent to the second (backup) server by mistake.

[TSM]

You can backup all the email in exchange by just copying it to another email box, you can also get apps from GFI and others that backit all up to an MSSQL server.

[timwilky]

Never used exchange. as I am a postfix and sendmail type.

Can you not script a simple filter to make a copy of all mail to a directory along with maintaining an activity log. Then simply archive the directory/log as required.


I do similar for some of my clients who have a requirement to audit all mail

Ive heard of these people before http://www.cryoserver.com but never used/seen them. They are appliance based though.

Dan

Agree with the above, save money and archive it yourself, the only thing we use an external company for is storage of the actual backup tapes etc themselves offsite (well copies of em)

Originally Posted by Iansv

...actual backup tapes etc themselves offsite (well copies of em)...

Pah, move with the times. Backup to DVD's. Cost less, take up less space. Granted they're smaller capacity than DDS3 etc but still a space saver.

*Glaces at his HP SureStore DAT24 sat between his monitor & office phone *

Originally Posted by Baph

Pah, move with the times. Backup to DVD's. Cost less, take up less space. Granted they're smaller capacity than DDS3 etc but still a space saver.

*Glaces at his HP SureStore DAT24 sat between his monitor & office phone *

Yea ok, even with dual layer dvd's 8.4gig you can get 23.8 of them on one LTO/Ultrium tape. Nice space reduction, oh and it saves someone sitting there all night swapping dvd's every 30minutes.....

Dan

Originally Posted by Sudoxe

Yea ok, even with dual layer dvd's 8.4gig you can get 23.8 of them on one LTO/Ultrium tape. Nice space reduction, oh and it saves someone sitting there all night swapping dvd's every 30minutes.....

Dan

That would be the reason we have a DVD server. Preload with 100 DVD's of any size you like, start the dump, job done. But then, a client site backup for us (their database alone) can easily fill 24Gb.

I also note you missed the hidden sarcasm in my post (namely, the fact I have a DAT drive on my desk) :P