GFI MailArchiver 6: Effective SMB email archiving solution

Email today is not simply a replacement for the venerable paper memo. Rather, it is the way we share documents and other types of information with our co-workers, vendors, and customers. This results in mailbox databases containing a large amount of sensitive business and personal information. So courts are increasingly finding in favor of parties requesting thorough searches of email repositories as part of discovery. Because of this shift in messaging importance, small and medium businesses are faced with several legal, ethical, and administrative challenges, including:

• Messages distributed across hundreds of end-user devices in personal archive files (e.g., .PST)
• The ability to efficiently search thousands of messages for one or more pieces of information, as specified in a discovery request, possibly extending over several years
• The ability to place on hold messages identified as relevant to a discovery request
• Enforcement of retention policies
• Efficient use of storage
• Easy access to archives by end-users and administrators
• Maintain acceptable overall performance of production messaging system

This review rates how well GFI MailArchiver helps SMBs meet these challenges. My findings are based on a demo provided by the vendor as well as independent e-discovery research.

MailArchiver works with Microsoft Exchange and any other IMAP compliant email system. For the purpose of this review, we'll focus on implementation in an Exchange environment.

Using Exchange journaling, MailArchiver extracts, indexes, and stores all messages sent or received using the organization's email system. Messages are archived even if the user deletes them, taking the decision about what to keep or what to throw away out of the hands of individual employees. There is one exception. MailArchiver does not process email marked as spam. Multi-layered, prioritized business policies, defined by you, help manage retention of messages with varying content.

MailArchiver deals with .PST files by providing for their automatic import from end-user devices. This isn't a continuous process. It's intended to build an initial archive that is complete. You still have to decide whether you want your data spread across the enterprise on uncontrolled .PST files, but you won't have to worry about court sanctions because you missed one or more .PST files during discovery.

Backups of the archive stores use volume shadow copy. Regular backups are possible, even during business hours, without serious degradation of email performance.

The typical MailArchiver environment consists of a front end Microsoft IIS server, a middle tier MailArchiver application server, and a back-end database server. Microsoft Active Directory is also necessary for mailbox and licensing management. MailArchiver scales by adding additional servers for load balancing. Virtual servers are supported. Also required are:

• .NET framework
• IE5.5 or later

You have your choice of databases and database configurations, including:

• Firebird database (ships with product) and file system storage. Tracking information is stored in the database with content stored in the resident file system. GFI does not recommend Firebird for organizations with more than 2000 mailboxes. Another limitation is lack of database auditing.
• Microsoft SQL Server with file system storage. Tracking information is stored in the database with content stored in the resident file system.
• Microsoft SQL Server. All information related to the archives is stored in the database.

Storage concerns when facing email archiving loom large. However, MailArchiver minimizes storage use by archiving only what is necessary to locate messages and create audit trails. For example, a message sent to the entire company is only stored in the archive once, with information about the sender and receivers.