Choosing the Right Archiving Strategy

Revision as of 23:38, 21 June 2010 by Vivian (talk | contribs)

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 emails which are sent/received in the future, existing emails should be archived