E-Mail Archiving Without Software, NorthSeas AMT
Daily business e-mail communication has now reached a level that even just a few years ago would have seemed laughable to most CIOs. Unfortunately, this excessive messaging load has become such a burden on both users and administrators that it now threatens to strip e-mail - the most effective business communication tool ever invented - of much of its essential value. The conflict between the need to manage the explosive growth of e-mail combined with the reality that it is now too risky for organizations to regularly delete messages is an "E-mail Paradox." Resolving the Paradox demands a new model for e-mail storage. Because mail-servers offer insufficient storage capacity, a strategy of leaving messages on the server can quickly end up causing performance problems. But, downloading and storing e-mail messages in individual user’s computers usually prohibits central accessibility and is a burden on users. For most organizations, neither of these options is acceptable. There is therefore a growing need for e-mail storage systems that provide a scalable, centralized corporate repository, independent of the mail-server. If the repository is easily accessible to users the server performance implications of the current model of ever-expanding message stores can be avoided. The need for better e-mail storage goes well beyond Compliance. Sheer volume alone demands more effective e-mail storage. A 2005 study by Osterman Research found that the average server-based mailbox quota was 100 MB per user. When you consider that the daily use of e-mail can easily exceed 16 MB per day per person, the average mailbox user has only 6 days of storage capacity. There are many software applications in the marketplace that address e-mail archiving by moving messages from the mail-server to secondary less-expensive storage. However, because of the sophistication of most commercial e-mail applications these solutions tend to be somewhat complex, often tied to a specific vendor application and represents a significant financial and time investment for the customer. Message analysts The Radicati Group, have found that more than half of companies who have implemented software based solution are unhappy with their solution, in particular citing time consuming management as the number one concern (October 2004). Osterman’s study found that although 65% of the organizations surveyed felt that having better e-mail storage (or "archiving") was desirable or very desirable, only 18% had yet to implement a solution. Statistics like this typify a strong market demand for new approaches and/or new technologies. There has to be a better way. It has become quite popular of late for organizations, both large and small, to deploy appliance-based solutions where capable options exist. For example, the growing popularity of Network Attached Storage (NAS) appliances and more recently Ant-Spam/anti-virus appliances is evidence of an obvious preference for the simplicity of solutions of this type. Because appliances are pre-configured and optimized for a particular application they are quicker and easier to deploy and less arduous to manage than other solutions. Appliance solutions are particularly well-suited to Small-to-Midsize Businesses (SMBs) where IT support teams are small, and often part-time. Is it possible to deploy e-mail storage and archiving as a network appliance? I believe it is. My company's appliance for example (the NorthSeas Guard E/N), contains all the necessary functionality to archive mail as well as providing users with easy access to archived messages, without any need for third-party software. The appliance sits in the data path (either before or after the mail-server) and writes a copy of e-mail messages in their native Internet standard format (RFC822) to the network storage system designated by the customer as the message archive, while allowing the original message to pass through to its destination. This creates a vendor-independent corporate message repository out of any network storage. You can even utilize unused storage capacity currently on your network. The appliance also captures metadata about each message in an appliance-resident database while it archives the message. The Search and Replay™ application (a Web application on the appliance) then uses this database for searching and retrieving archive mail. Appliance-based solutions like this one may offer some interesting and important advantages over software-based alternatives:
- They are easy to deploy and manage and don’t require a change to the customer’s e-mail client or server applications.
- They turn any network storage into an easily accessible, scalable corporate message store.
- Messages can be deleted frequently from both the server and from user’s inboxes since all messages are captured automatically in the archive repository. (At NorthSeas, we refer to the concept of "Invisible Mailbox Quotas," the option of shrinking mail-server quotas to a fraction of their current size while still providing users with unlimited e-mail storage.)
- Appliances that are vendor-neutral do not lock the customer into any one vendor’s application or architecture. A single central message repository can even support mixed messaging environments.
- Appliance solutions are usually more affordable which means when they provide the functionality you need, they offer better value.
Reproduced from an article published by Data Storage Connection
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