by: Sarah Howard
Just about every week I see another customer who is asking for help with email archive migration. It makes sense. Many customers have been running email archival on their Exchange Server for over 5 years and it is time for a new solution.
The major area of difficulty with regards to email archive migration is email “stubbing”. By stubbing, I am mean the process whereby the archive solution removes all, or part, of the email in the Exchange Store and leave behind a stub file.
Before archive data can be migrated to a new archive server, email stubs must be “re-united” or “reversed”. Sometimes it is impractical to put the email back together because of the space constraints on Exchange. In other cases, the archive solution does not provide the tools to perform the stub reversal.
If you are considering a new email archive solution, I recommend that you take into consideration the following migration features and issues.
Make sure the email archive product has tools to reverse the stubbing process.
Make sure PST export tools are available to assist the migration process.
Consider the amount of archive data that will accumulate in the archive, say over a 5 year period, and calculate if there will be space on Exchange to reverse the stubs.
For best results, find an email archive solution like Mimosa Systems that keeps a complete copy of email and attachments in the archive so stub reversal is not required.
All of this depends on the possibility of switching email archive vendors in the future. Maybe you will stay with your current vendor, but should you ever decide to switch email archive vendors, then it is best to be prepared.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
The True Cost of Under Preserving ESI
by: Sarah Howard
The arguments for the under preserving of ESI are well known and varied. The most prevalent argument I hear for under preserving is “the more data, email, files etc. we keep, the higher the risk that it will be used against me in litigation“.
This is an argument that assumes that all ESI is somehow harmful and should exist for the shortest amount of time as possible. This is one of the main reasons companies adopt the 30/60 or 90 day retention policy for their employees email accounts.
There are two main problems with this type of thinking. First, for those companies that enforce a 30/60 or 90 day retention policy for their email accounts, in reality they are not lowering their risk of “bad” ESI being used against them. They are simply making it more expensive for them to find that ESI when directed by a discovery request.
Employees do not delete all emails, even when they are running up against a “Clean out your mailbox or it will stop working” message from IT. They simply move that email they want to retain out of their email box into a personal archive or PST. The ESI still exists.
The second problem with this 30/60 or 90 day retention policy is it ignores the fact that ESI can help you in litigation. Having access to all relevant data for a given action will help you in determining what your strategy should be in reacting to the litigation. This is called Early Case Assessment (ECA). Reviewing all relevant data for a litigation can tell you if you should settle the case because you can’t prevail or to fight the litigation because you can prove you position in the litigation.
Creating retention policies for your ESI based on business requirements rather than creating retention policies to flush “bad” ESI will insure ESI is available for business use as well as for review during early case assessment.
If you choose to keep ESI for realistic retention periods, then you will need an ESI archive like the Mimosa NearPoint Archive. The NearPoint Archive can capture discoverable ESI from your Exchange email system, your file system and from your Microsoft SharePoint system into a single searchable archive.
The arguments for the under preserving of ESI are well known and varied. The most prevalent argument I hear for under preserving is “the more data, email, files etc. we keep, the higher the risk that it will be used against me in litigation“.
This is an argument that assumes that all ESI is somehow harmful and should exist for the shortest amount of time as possible. This is one of the main reasons companies adopt the 30/60 or 90 day retention policy for their employees email accounts.
There are two main problems with this type of thinking. First, for those companies that enforce a 30/60 or 90 day retention policy for their email accounts, in reality they are not lowering their risk of “bad” ESI being used against them. They are simply making it more expensive for them to find that ESI when directed by a discovery request.
Employees do not delete all emails, even when they are running up against a “Clean out your mailbox or it will stop working” message from IT. They simply move that email they want to retain out of their email box into a personal archive or PST. The ESI still exists.
The second problem with this 30/60 or 90 day retention policy is it ignores the fact that ESI can help you in litigation. Having access to all relevant data for a given action will help you in determining what your strategy should be in reacting to the litigation. This is called Early Case Assessment (ECA). Reviewing all relevant data for a litigation can tell you if you should settle the case because you can’t prevail or to fight the litigation because you can prove you position in the litigation.
Creating retention policies for your ESI based on business requirements rather than creating retention policies to flush “bad” ESI will insure ESI is available for business use as well as for review during early case assessment.
If you choose to keep ESI for realistic retention periods, then you will need an ESI archive like the Mimosa NearPoint Archive. The NearPoint Archive can capture discoverable ESI from your Exchange email system, your file system and from your Microsoft SharePoint system into a single searchable archive.
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