Enterprise Vault and alternatives
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  1. #1
    Registered User Niclo Iste's Avatar
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    Enterprise Vault and alternatives

    OK I'm dealing with a fun task here. I have an office I support and they like their mail. When I say like, it's more along the lines of craving with an addiction only second to that of heroin. I have .pst files all over the place and even more fun they never remember how to do it. So every 2 or 4 weeks I hear back from the same people and I show them all over again and end up doing their .pst archive for them again. I've seen/used Enterprise Vault and it seems pretty useful. However I did stumble upon ZL Technologies Not that I have any idea if they are legitimate but it did make me realize I should look for the best solution to fit the job at hand here. I would rather an archiving system that allows us to retain mail but not eat up space in the mailboxes. Hard drive space naturally is a commodity in short supply but if we could have an archive we have at our data center and backups of it we send out through a backup management firm I think our company would be better off. So what have you all seen/used and what are your thoughts?
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    Driver Terrier NooNoo's Avatar
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    How big are these .pst files? Which version of Outlook? Hard drive prices are reasonable again.. perhaps a search and move script would be more useful?
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  3. #3
    Registered User Niclo Iste's Avatar
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    well I'm referring to server drive space. We not only have to buy drives but space for the new racks at the data center. We're using Exchange 2007 and all users are on Office 2010. The pst files are more a problem since I'm managing other peoples unnecessary personal filing cabinets. Training of the users is out of the question. They already bold faced stated they don't want to and feel that there is no need to learn how to do it. An Email Archive System would be preferrable so it takes the whole task out of their hands. Every so often they fire someone and they want to read every e-mail ever from and to that user. It's a time consuming task to get a hold of where we send our backup tapes and the task is compounded by them guesstimating the dates they need without any input on what the mail titles are. If there were a utility like Enterprise Vault they can search for the files themselves rather than taking ITs time up from fixing things and now focusing on an e-mail nugget that may not even exist.

    Side note, the users have a tendancy to ruin their pst files and or lose them. So even if they were trained I doubt the problem is going to go away.
    Last edited by Niclo Iste; March 15th, 2012 at 01:25 PM.
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  4. #4
    Driver Terrier NooNoo's Avatar
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    So a NAS to hold a local copy? PST files in 2010 can be 20GB - that's an awful lot of emails... how big are the current pst files on average?

    Thing is, they will want to learn how to archive if the pst file grows so big it impacts performance. Then rather than the unfriendly archive system that outlook uses, you could use something like this
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  5. #5
    Registered User Niclo Iste's Avatar
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    On average the users archive 3-4 months of mail at once, that typically is 2 gigabytes if not just under. They only archive when they can't send/receive anymore because their mail folder is full.
    In addition they like to map back to their PST files and read them or so they say. I have spiderwebs of pst files they use that date back to 2002.
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  6. #6
    Driver Terrier NooNoo's Avatar
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    So the idea of a local NAS and an auto archive system doesn't appeal?
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  7. #7
    Registered User Guts3d's Avatar
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    Could you use scheduled tasks to do it every day at a certain time to a certain network drive, or even a partition on their own hard drive? As NooNoo pointed out, the .PST's can get as large as 20 gigabytes before they explode.
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  8. #8
    Registered User Niclo Iste's Avatar
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    They like to be able to read these psts and have them mapped to their outlook. Microsoft doesn't support PST files mapped to a network drive as it can cause problems. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/297019.
    One Script to rule them all.
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  9. #9
    Driver Terrier NooNoo's Avatar
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    No read the archiver, it archives to html emails which are easily browsed. Take a look.
    Never, ever approach a computer saying or even thinking "I will just do this quickly."

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