The benefits associated with archiving Microsoft Exchange email and associated data, creates many cost effective solutions. Archiving facilitates government regulatory or civil litigation searches for ediscovery requests. It also allows for more complete archive journaling, and provides storage benefits for both mailbox growth and the various storage devices that can be utilized.

Although lowering storage reduction costs is a common denominator for email archiving, compliance requirements are moving more companies to implementing archiving strategies. Depending on the motivation factors, cost savings on storage are subject to interpretation by different people.  For some people, compressing email could reduce licensing, as well as storage hardware costs.  For others it may mean creating a mailbox for end users, which has virtually unlimited space.

The majority of Microsoft Exchange Server archiving solutions have some form of compression that reduces the size of overall archived emails.  For an Exchange email administrator, an unlimited space mailbox really just means eliminating the user responsibility of being concerned about having to archive their email. This allows mailboxes to grow as long as there is more than adequate disk space real estate available to allow seamless expansion.  The limitations of unlimited mailboxes are usually determined by the archiving options provided by the archiving solution. According to the Ferris Research blog, Microsoft recommends against using stubbing techniques.  Microsoft further recommends using 3rd party email archiving solutions that allow configurations to move email messages completely out of the mailbox without leaving stubbing foot prints  inside the mailbox.

6 different stubbing techniques are provided below only for informational purposes, but are not best practices recommended by Microsoft.

1. Substitute body and attachment with a plain text Stub
2. Substitute body attachment with HTML Stub
3. Maintain plain text body only with deleted attachment
4. Maintain HTML message body only, with deleted attachment
5. Maintain HTML body and image with deleted attachment
6. Message attachment residing in the archives

Will your current archiving procedures or planned archiving solution meet all future email storage requirements?

Archive Stubbing Techniques Not Recommended

Free ebook download: Top 10 Most Popular Troubleshooting Posts for Email Administrators

John Mancini over at the Conquer Information Chaos blog thinks so, and he can’t understand why it hasn’t become a priority in document management yet. Here’s an excerpt from his post:

In a nutshell, email is a microcosm of the DIGITAL LANDFILL that exists in most organizations….

We all have it.

For most of us, what we are doing is an ungodly mess.

We certainly have no shortage of evidence of the risks of mismanagement — just take a look at a newspaper.

Lack of a strategy is pushing storage costs higher and higher as the volume of information explodes.

Lack of a strategy is taking a productivity toll as organizations try to pretend they are collaborating by sending around endless volumes of attachments.

Digital landfill-that’s a great name for all the emails, files, and other assorted data that fills many an office PC or server! What’s in yours?

Email Management: Should it Be the Next Killer App in Document Management?

Free ebook download: Top 10 Most Popular Troubleshooting Posts for Email Administrators