I agree on all points but the email archival. Meaning, I think email archival is desirable in a wide range of circumstances including the regulatory ones.
File archival, however, is best served by not having to do it at all, or implementing better document management on a whole so that one does not end up with 9000 different versions of files that people feel they absolutely *need*. -ASB: http://XeeSM.com/AndrewBaker On Mon, Jun 28, 2010 at 6:14 PM, Kurt Buff <[email protected]> wrote: > On Mon, Jun 28, 2010 at 14:16, Mike Tellson > <[email protected]> wrote: > > My company is looking to implement an archiving solution for both file > > servers and exchange mailboxes. After several vendors came out and gave > a > > “dog and pony show” the two products that appear to be what we are > looking > > for are CommVault Simpana and Sunbelt’s Exchange archiver & File > archiver. > > Does anyone on this list have experience with either of these products? > > What are your opinions of each (good, bad, or ugly)? > > I have some peripheral experience with the Sunbelt stuff - I didn't > implement it myself, and it was given to one of my minions by the IT > manager, which pissed me off no end. > > o- Don't mix the implementation of the two products - Just. > Don't. In particular, don't mix the archive files into the same > directories. > > o- Make sure you don't throw random crappy old hardware at it. > > My next points are true of any complex solution like this: > > o- Don't give it to a junior sysadmin to implement. > > o- Make sure you have a comprehensive plan for implementation and > testing > > Specific issues that come to mind immediately: > > o- We had to make exceptions for several different file types > (.mdb, CAD drawings, and some others) because the clients couldn't > stand the wait time for the retrieval from the archiver, and the > client would hang, and then we'd have to unarchive the file manually. > > o- Once the emails and files have been archived and mingled in > the directories created on the archive server, there is no > distinguishing them, in any way. > > We cheaped out and used an older server with poor RAID hardware for > the OS drives, and we're still paying the price. > > There are other problems, but I'll leave you with a bit of philosophy: > > o- Adding more disk is probably cheaper than trying to do file > archiving. The cost of the software and the maintenance/management > overhead almost certainly more expensive than adding more disk. > > o- Email archiving is the same story with one caveat: the only > real justification for it: Legal protection. If you need email > archiving for regulatory compliance, customer service or contractual > issues, you're good to go. Otherwise, don't do it. > > Kurt > > ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~
