Choosing the Right Archiving Strategy

MailStore Server offers several options for archiving emails. Choosing the right archiving strategy depends on the email infrastucture (e.g. email server and email clients) on one hand, and company objectives on the other.

Automatic Archiving of all Incoming and Outgoing Emails

With this archiving method, all emails are archived before they are delivered to the user mailboxes.

Advantages

• Completeness of the archive is guaranteed
• Emails cannot be manipulated before archiving
• Meeting legal requirements is made possible or greatly facilitated

Disadvantages

• If private emails are allowed in the company, this archiving method may cause difficulties regarding the privacy laws of some countries. In this case, a company-wide ban of all private email communication, a contractual agreement with the employees or approval of an employee organization would be required
• The workload of the email server and the amount of data is not reduced because all emails are still delivered and stored in the mailboxes
• Emails can only be allocated to users as sent or received object; a reproduction of the mailbox folder structure is not possible

Implementation

• With Microsoft Exchange by archiving the Journal mailbox
• With IMPA-compatible email server such as Novell GroupWise, Kerio MailServer or MDaemon by using multipdrop mailboxes (also called catchall mailboxes)
• In all other cases and in companies without their own email server by using the MailStore Proxy server free of charge

Appendix: One-time Archiving of Existing Emails

In addition to archiving future emails, preexisting emails should also be archived and made available permanently to your company. This one-time process should include emails in decentralized storage (e.g. PST files or the users' email clients). At the same time, older emails (e.g. more than two years old) can be deleted from the mailboxes automatically after archiving. This frees up storage space on the email server and simplifies backup procedures. All emails remain accessible to users via the MailStore archive.

Time-controlled Execution of Archiving Tasks

Every archiving task can be executed according to a schedule. For example, an archiving task can be configured to search certain mailboxes and archive all new or modified emails daily at 11pm.

Advantages

• The folder structure of the archived mailboxes, email clients or PST files is applied to the archive facilitating access to the archived emails
• The archived emails can be deleted from the mailboxes according to pre-defined rules permanently reducing the workload of the email server

Disadvantages

• Emails can be deleted or manipulated before archiving, even if the archiving intervals are very short
• Meeting legal requirements cannot, or only with difficulty, be implemented