GFI MailArchiver To The Rescue (22-06-2005)
Who Makes it: GFI
Where to get it: http://gfi.com/mailarchiver/
Scenario:
If you work with Microsoft Exchange a lot you?ll identify with these issues.
Issue 1 ? Information store size, increasing Exchange performance.
You have been running Exchange for a year or so. You have several sales people that have saved every e-mail they have ever sent OR received and most of them are of questionable ?sales? content. Because of this, your exchange server is operating like someone poured cold molasses in it.
Users are complaining on how long it takes to send and receive messages.
Issue 2 ? Disaster recovery + Fear.
Perhaps it?s happened already. If not, it probably will. Your monster Exchange server is going to go down. When it does/did, how long did it take to come back to a functioning level? Exchange log files? What are those?
Issue 3 ? Mail archive compliance laws.
Your manager has come to you and said in order to comply with federal regulations, you must archive all your messages. Is tape backup enough?
GFI MailArchiver to the rescue!
I, like perhaps all of you have faced these questions before and I must say when I found this product I was skeptical. Once I installed it though, I too became a believer.
How it works.
The basics of how this system works is brilliant. It works with the built-in functionality of Microsoft Exchange. It uses the simple - archive mail to this mailbox check mark - in the mailbox store configuration dialog. Once you point the mail to the archive, the archiver does the rest. After you set up your SQL server to accept the data the end user can simply access a web interface to see his or her mail and search it etc.
Installation is a snap
My installation process only took about a half an hour. I have a Microsoft Exchange server running on a 1.7GHZ AMD with 2GB RAM and a SQL server on the same hardware. Both of these had acceptable performance until my information store grew to over 12GB. Then things started to get sluggish.
The first step was to create a mailbox on the Exchange server called ARCHIVE. Once this is done you simply go to the general tab on the mailbox store tab and select ?archive all messages? to the archive mailbox.
The next step was to prepare my SQL server for the data. You can use the MSDE or Access but hey, if you?re archiving mail, you know it?s going to be big, and then do it right and use SQL. If your users ever plan to use the web interface to query for text inside the message body of the mails then SQL 2000 is a requirement because the ?Full Test Search? option requires SQL 2000 to run.
The SQL 2000 server setup part is easy. Just answer yes to all the dialogs. Make sure that you check that the Full text search check box is checked in the server component dialog during setup. That will at least get you a running system. I would suggest applying SP3 for SQL 2000 just to make sure all is up to date.
The documentation is excellent describing the steps of creating the database and assigning the proper rights for GFI to access the SQL server.
After that, I checked the IIS installation on the Exchange server. It?s important that the ASP.NET and .NET framework 1.1 is installed.
Then the easy part of actually installing the GFI MailArchiver software. You install this on the Exchange server it?s self. You simply answer questions about the location of the web service and the license info and you?re off to the Web administrator GUI.
At the Web GUI you enter the SQL database information you defined during the SQL server setup and setup up the security, rights and privileges for your users and you?re done!
Important things to consider on installation:
A couple of things that I would make sure you do on the installation is to enable the envelope journaling feature of Microsoft Exchange. This ensures that complete message headers are also stored in your archive (extra CC, BCC information and other mail tracking information). When you?re serious about having complete archives, then you?ll really want to enable this feature. Just go to Microsoft and search for the Exejcfg.exe tool.
Secondly, if you?re using the Outlook Archiver for your users mailbox, The GFI product and the Outlook product cannot be used at the same time to retrieve information from the journal mailbox. Keep in mind, if you?re using the GFI mail archiver, you DON?T need the outlook one.
Why you need this software:
The first reason I think you need this software is the performance reason. Archiving your older mail off line to another database is always going to make your Exchange information store run faster. Also if you have a standard version of Exchange and are pushing the 16GB limit on the information store then archiving your mail to an offline source can end up paying for the SQL server and saving you money too.
The ability to quickly search for old email messages with GFI MailArchiver is really efficient. Administrative users are able to search through all of the old mail using highly complex queries. Even the simplest user can figure out the web interface. You can feel comfortable as an administrator passing down the power for your users to search through their own mail competently.
If you?re a public company, the second reason why archiving messages is important is in order to comply with regulatory requirements such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. According to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and SEC regulations, all public companies must archive all correspondence for 7 years for audit and review purposes. This includes e-mail. GFI MailArchiver is the perfect tool for this ? all you?ll need to do is configure it to archive all messages, and then ensure that you back up the associated SQL Server database as required. Bang, requirements met.
Even if your company isn?t public or subject to these regulations, message archiving is still important for legal reasons relating to business policies. For example, if certain workplace policies on discrimination were violated, or other unethical practices were to occur, the email messages of the people in question would almost certainly be required. GFI MailArchiver would provide the perfect way to efficiently assemble the necessary documents.
Lastly is the added benefit of disaster recovery. Should you loose your exchange server for any reason and the information store can only be recovered from an older tape then you still have the mail in the archive. So in fact, you never really loose mail! That helps me sleep at night.
Why is this better than the other guys?
There are other guys out there selling mail archiving products however none of them can compete with GFI. All of the others require plug-ins for outlook or much more complex setups. With GFI, you as an administrator don?t have to worry about going around to every client and installing software, the users just need a web browser and a little education and their working on their own. I?m one of those old fashioned guys who live for keeping it simple.
Conclusion
I personally will endorse this software to anyone who runs Microsoft Exchange server. For those networks that already have a SQL server then the decision to buy this product is a ?no brainer?. The price point for this product of $399 for 50 mailboxes is so low that everyone can afford to reap the benefits of a faster Exchange server and a safer more reliable information store.
