On Mon, Jun 28, 2010 at 14:16, Mike Tellson
<micha...@colonialsavings.com> wrote:
> My company is looking to implement an archiving solution for both file
> servers and exchange mailboxes. After several vendors came out and gave a
> “dog and pony show” the two products that appear to be what we are looking
> for are CommVault Simpana and Sunbelt’s Exchange archiver & File archiver.
> Does anyone on this list have experience with either of these products?
> What are your opinions of each (good, bad, or ugly)?
I have some peripheral experience with the Sunbelt stuff - I didn't
implement it myself, and it was given to one of my minions by the IT
manager, which pissed me off no end.
o- Don't mix the implementation of the two products - Just.
Don't. In particular, don't mix the archive files into the same
directories.
o- Make sure you don't throw random crappy old hardware at it.
My next points are true of any complex solution like this:
o- Don't give it to a junior sysadmin to implement.
o- Make sure you have a comprehensive plan for implementation and testing
Specific issues that come to mind immediately:
o- We had to make exceptions for several different file types
(.mdb, CAD drawings, and some others) because the clients couldn't
stand the wait time for the retrieval from the archiver, and the
client would hang, and then we'd have to unarchive the file manually.
o- Once the emails and files have been archived and mingled in
the directories created on the archive server, there is no
distinguishing them, in any way.
We cheaped out and used an older server with poor RAID hardware for
the OS drives, and we're still paying the price.
There are other problems, but I'll leave you with a bit of philosophy:
o- Adding more disk is probably cheaper than trying to do file
archiving. The cost of the software and the maintenance/management
overhead almost certainly more expensive than adding more disk.
o- Email archiving is the same story with one caveat: the only
real justification for it: Legal protection. If you need email
archiving for regulatory compliance, customer service or contractual
issues, you're good to go. Otherwise, don't do it.
Kurt
~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~
~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~
