Thanks, that all makes sense and since I only have about 200 mailboxes I'll stick with the Sunbelt SEA for now.
Also the appliance uses indexing which I have heard is not ideal either! I'm moving to 2007 in Jan, I'll make sure to implement the older than ~ 6 months from the inbox and I should be fine. Thanks ___________________________________ Stefan Jafs From: Michael B. Smith [mailto:mich...@theessentialexchange.com] Sent: Wednesday, December 17, 2008 3:51 PM To: MS-Exchange Admin Issues Subject: RE: Microsoft Recommends Against Stubbing Blah blah blah. There are ups and downs to any solution. And you have to take what a sales person says with a grain of salt (any sales person - that's why I [with my sales person hat on J ] will suggest that your best bet is to get an independent opinion from someone like a consultant who is not tied to any specific solution and who will evaluate your needs first). Nothing stops the fact that the more messages you have in a given folder, over a few thousand, is going to impact performance for Outlook and Exchange negatively. If something isn't in a folder, well you can't search for it in that folder. Any "integrated search solution" is going to take you, at least part of the time, out of Outlook. What Microsoft tends to recommend, these days, is: 1] keep the major folders below a few thousand items 2] move old items out of the major folders. So...let's take Boss John. He never deletes anything; so he has 25,000 items in his inbox spanning his seven years as a boss. He complains about Outlook performance. (Duh!) Current Microsoft guidance would recommend that you create (on Exchange 2007) a Managed Folder Mailbox Policy that would (for example) move items more than six months old into another folder. Microsoft Search can still find the content (it's still in the mailbox) but inbox performance improves dramatically, because those items are no longer in the critical path. Many archiving solutions can perform similar actions, along with removing some content from the mailbox store. Which is best for you? I dunno. You need to evaluate your business drivers against the functionality present in various products. Also, you need to evaluate how products scale. I know that a number of the lower-end products I've evaluated (read: less expensive) are good up until about 1K mailboxes. Beyond that - well, you are better looking at an enterprise class product. Regards, Michael B. Smith, MCITP:SA,EMA/MCSE/Exchange MVP My blog: http://TheEssentialExchange.com/blogs/michael I'll be at TEC'2009! http://www.tec2009.com/vegas/index.php From: Stefan Jafs [mailto:sj...@amico.com] Sent: Wednesday, December 17, 2008 3:33 PM To: MS-Exchange Admin Issues Subject: FW: Microsoft Recommends Against Stubbing I'm looking to Purchase Sunbelt SEA but maybe I should not! This is from the competition that's try to sell me an appliance. ___________________________________ Stefan Jafs Stefan, I had the opportunity to view the Sunbelt demo today. I did not know that they used "stubbing" instead of journaling. Here's some information to consider straight from Microsoft: >From Ferris Research: An important feature of email archiving is called "stubbing." This is a process whereby an entire email or just the attachment is removed from Exchange and replaced with a "stub" file. When the user opens the message in Outlook, the stub file retrieves the archived email and/or attachment from the archive. The benefit is reduced Exchange storage. Microsoft is now recommending against the use of stubbing: * Search problems. If you retain months (and years) of stub files, several hundred thousand messages will be processed in this way. The probability of successfully locating a specific message with Outlook search is greatly reduced when you do not have a significant portion of the message body available. Users need to go to the archive multiple times to find a desired message. Third-party email archiving solutions solve the problem of mailbox size, but they reduce search efficiency and increase user time performing multiple searches. * Performance. If folders contain a large number of messages, even ones just consisting of stubs, Outlook slows down a lot. Microsoft therefore recommends that third-party email archiving solutions be configured to move email content completely out of the mailbox without retaining stub files in the mailbox. For more information, read this TechNet article <http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc671168(EXCHG.80).aspx> . The information targets Exchange 2007, but it is also relevant for Exchange 2003 systems considering third-party email archiving. This email and any attached files are confidential and intended solely for the intended recipient(s). If you are not the named recipient you should not read, distribute, copy or alter this email. Any views or opinions expressed in this email are those of the author and do not represent those of the Amico Corporation. Warning: Although precautions have been taken to make sure no viruses are present in this email, the company cannot accept responsibility for any loss or damage that arise from the use of this email or attachments. This email and any attached files are confidential and intended solely for the intended recipient(s). If you are not the named recipient you should not read, distribute, copy or alter this email. Any views or opinions expressed in this email are those of the author and do not represent those of the Amico Corpoartion company. Warning: Although precautions have been taken to make sure no viruses are present in this email, the company cannot accept responsibility for any loss or damage that arise from the use of this email or attachments. ~ Ninja Email Security with Cloudmark Spam Engine Gets Image Spam ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Ninja ~
