I've been running MessageSolution for a few years. I have one Exchange 2003 server with about 200 mailboxes.
In the beginning, it was an almost complete disaster. The size of my mail store just about doubled by the time it was done with the initial archive operation, OWA became completely inaccessible every few days, and on Exchange store.exe started crashing on a regular basis. The MessageSolution software would sometimes just stop archiving. It was so bad that I asked for a refund, but they asked me to give them a chance to make everything right. They did eventually (a couple of months of troubleshooting) get it all working, although I never did regain the space in my database. It has been working OK for a couple of years now. One thing to note, I haven't had to use tech support over a year, so this may have changed, but their developers all seem to be based in China. For any issue that required their expertise, I had to give them remote access to my EEA server and they would work on in during what was for me the overnight hours. Some other issues - make them show you everything actually working - pst import, exporting archived messages to pst files, restoring messages, etc. Some of these things seem to work through the web interface, and others don't. Some functions, you have to use a separate utility instead of the web interface - I think searching for messages and then exporting the matching messages to pst was one of these. It works seamlessly (now) in OWA - users have no indication that they are viewing a stubbed message. In Outlook, in the preview pane, stubbed messages have a button to view the message but double clicking opens the original message as usual. The Outlook plugin often gets disabled and requires reenabling in Outlook. I see this also on other Outlook plugins, e.g. the Vipre plugin we use, so I don't know if this is a problem with the plugins, our environment, or just par for the course. One thing I do use all the time is the searching the archive - I'll search the archive even for recent messages since it often faster than scrolling through my inbox if I can't remember the sender and or subject You can't do a search from within OWA - for that you have to log into the EEA web interface. So for users on the road to search their archive you would have to make the EEA server available from the outside (VPN, port forwarding, etc.). So, bottom line, I am satisfied with the product now, since over the past couple of years it has worked acceptably well, but if I had to do it all over again I would choose a different solution. Ralph ________________________________ From: Kevan Dickinson [mailto:kevan.dickin...@nsf-cmi.com] Sent: Tuesday, June 07, 2011 6:52 AM To: MS-Exchange Admin Issues Subject: Email Archiving Solutions All I am currently looking into Email Archive solutions. We are running Exchange 2010 with about 300 mailboxes. One of the main aims of this project is to eliminate PST files and to keep the exchange database at a reasonable size. The product must integrate with Outlook seamlessly, archived email must be available off line (cached) and available through OWA and Outlook anywhere. I have identified 2 products that would seem to fit our criteria and would like to know whether anyone has experience of either product or any feedback they can offer about usability, features and support. The products are Metalogix "Archive Manager" and MessageSolutions "Enterprise Email Archive" Thank you in advance for any opinions that you can offer. Regards Kevan Dickinson Network Manager NSF-CMi Ltd 23 Hanborough Business Park Long Hanborough Oxfordshire, OX29 8SJ Tel: 01993 885661 Fax: 01993 885603 Email: kevan.dickin...@nsf-cmi.com <mailto:kevan.dickin...@nsf-cmi.com> Website: www.nsf-cmi.com <http://www.nsf-cmi.com> ************************************************************************ ******** ***Disclaimer*** The contents of this Email may be privileged and are confidential. If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure, copying, distribution or any action taken or omitted to be taken in reliance on it, is prohibited and may be unlawful. Should you wish to use Email as a mode of communication, NSF-CMi Ltd and its subsidiaries are unable to guarantee the security of Email content outside of our own computer systems. This footnote also confirms that this Email message has been checked by MailMarshal for the presence of computer viruses. 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