by Steve Galloway | Nov 25, 2014
In-Place Archiving eliminates the need for Outlook personal store (.pst) files and allows users to store historical messages in an archive mailbox accessible in Microsoft Outlook 2010 and later and Microsoft Office Outlook Web App.
In Microsoft Exchange Server 2013, In-Place Archiving provides users with an alternate storage location in which to store historical messaging data. An In-Place Archive is an additional mailbox (called an archive mailbox) enabled for a mailbox user. Outlook 2007 and later and Outlook Web App users have seamless access to their archive mailbox. Using either of these client applications, users can view an archive mailbox and move or copy messages between their primary mailbox and the archive. In-Place Archiving presents a consistent view of messaging data to users and eliminates the user overhead required to manage .pst files.
You can provision a user’s archive on the same mailbox database as the user’s primary mailbox, another mailbox database on the same Mailbox server, or a mailbox database on another Mailbox server in the same Active Directory site. This provides flexibility to use tiered storage architecture and to store archive mailboxes on a different storage subsystem, such as near-line storage. In cross-premises Exchange 2010 and later deployments, you can also provision a cloud-based archive for mailboxes located on your on-premises Mailbox servers.
by Steve Galloway | Aug 18, 2014
With effect from August 18th, ComStat is providing 100GB inline email archiving. Inline archiving is provided in addition to the 50GB limits established for individual user accounts.
Inline archiving is a technique that relocates arhived email from on-premises equipment to users’ allocated services at the data centre.
Typically, small business users archive email using Microsoft Outlook to a segragated data file that sits apart from their Outlook inbox, sent Items, and other current folders. Archiving helps to improve system runtime. However, archived emails continue to reside on users’ individual workstations, and archives can only be accessed from the workstation that the arhive is situated on. This leaves the risk of data loss in the event of hard drive failure or machine failure. Unless the archive itself has been backed up using .pst, the archive remains vulnerable.
In our experience, users are not comfortable with Outlook’s backup functions and email backup, whether by copying current folders or using archives, is generally not organised. Typically, users’ email records are usually about as historic as the lifetime of their machine.
ComStat’s email services for premium business users provides 50GB mail storage per user. There is a case to argue that archiving is not necessary at this level. However, users who connect to email services with mobile devices via telco connections may have trouble managing large volumes of email on mobiles, particularly where bandwidth is limited, where data transfer volumes may be an issue, and where smartphones are physically limited to lower capacities (8GB, 16GB, etc).
Inline archiving helps to reduce inbox sizes, while relocating historic archives to the managed data centre also means users can access their archive via a variety of devices.
Inline archiving is available to premium business users by default. Other users considering this service should talk through options with ComStat. Existing users who want to upgrade to this service would need a manual rebuild of their environment, so it is important to plan needs in advance of execution of service.
