ZANTAZ EAS FOR EXCHANGE

Transcription

1 ZANTAZ EAS FOR EXCHANGE Using Archiving to Ease Exchange Server 2007 Migration White Paper

2 Contents Why EAS?...1 Introduction...2 Different Migration Strategies...3 How Does It Work?...4 What Happens to Archived Messages?...5 Reduced Server and Storage Requirements...6 Protection of Data for Business and Legal Reasons...6 Leveraging Knowledge Investment...7 Eliminating PST Files...8 New Features in Microsoft Exchange Server Conclusion...8 About ZANTAZ...9

3 WHY EAS? ZANTAZ EAS for Exchange enables enterprises to archive, retrieve, manage, and retain important e- mail messages and files. It also ensures that companies are prepared to efficiently, cost-effectively, and accurately respond to discovery requests for , whether for regulatory or litigation purposes. EAS for Exchange automatically captures, indexes, and archives messages and information based on corporate policy. After live messages from Exchange servers and legacy messages from usermanaged, distributed PST files are captured, organizations can then search and retrieve all messages and attachments, including all compliance-related metadata. The newest version of EAS for Exchange also streamlines and simplifies the process of upgrading or migrating from previous versions of Microsoft Exchange Server to Exchange Server In many production environments, these older servers are running close to their capacity limits due to the enormous dynamic volume of traffic. ZANTAZ EAS allows administrators to offload those servers and move the bulk of the information into the archive. The process of migrating users to Exchange Server 2007 is fast and stable. When migration is complete, administrators can restore the archived information to the new servers, or leave the information in the archive and introduce stubs, or pointers, that provide transparent ongoing access to the information for users. In addition to easing migration, EAS provides enterprises with other benefits, including: Flexible Archive Control No other solution offers as much control over what data is archived, when archived items are actually removed from the server computer running Exchange Server, and how archived messages are presented to the user. EAS can also support environments of mixed versions of Exchange Server as well as Notes Domino, thereby allowing companies to make the transition from Lotus Notes to Exchange Server or to upgrade their existing Exchange Server environment without pressure to do everything at once. This allows a choice of deployment alternatives to suit business and operational needs. Efficient Use of Storage Space EAS has been proven to use less than half the storage space its nearest competitor uses, thus reducing storage costs and backup times considerably in the long term. ZANTAZ EAS generates tremendous storage savings frequently in excess of 80 percent while providing control over retention and disposition, and enabling enterprisewide search, access, and review of the corporate information. Efficient, Resilient, and Nonproprietary Access to Archive EAS uses open, Web-based technology to provide an easily tuned and highly scalable service for querying and retrieving archived items for users. It is also important to note that no EAS Server processes play a part in the retrieval of user items, which avoids any bottlenecks or lack of resilience due to a single point of failure. In short, a high and unpredictable level of user access can be supported in such a way that impact on the network is minimized and service levels are optimized. Low Operational Overhead The speed at which EAS is able to scan and archive messages combined with the fact that archiving and backing up the archive can be carried out while users are online gives EAS an operational advantage. Other archive solutions require users to be offline while the archive is being backed up. This has an adverse impact on service availability and can extend the time required to perform housekeeping activities. EAS may also be used to synchronously or asynchronously replicate the document stores. Support for Highly Distributed Environments EAS has a unique Parent/Child architecture that allows the archiving process and the archive service to be established in the optimum locations after such factors as network bandwidth, CPU consumption, anticipated demand, and archive policy have been accounted for. For example, a large number of ZANTAZ EAS for Exchange 1

4 users in a location that is linked through a nonoptimal (or congested) network connection may be best serviced by a locally placed archive server, archive service, and search catalogue, while the enterprise maintains a single, central archive index service. This will reduce network traffic and ensure optimum archive and archive search/retrieval performance. The Parent/Child architecture also provides unsurpassed scalability because the role of the Parent server is to federate work to its practically limitless number of child servers.. Single Instance Storage When multiple files in a computer file system contain the same data, Single Instance Storage can replace identical files with a single stored copy of the file, while maintaining access to that single copy for all those users who previously had access. The same principle applies for messages and their attachments. Single Instance Storage also allows organizations to save disk space in systems with many copies of the same file. The central EAS index enables organizations to benefit from Single Instance Storage at a global level. Files and messages in the archive are compressed further for additional storage savings. Easy Implementation EAS for Exchange users can perform frequently required user and group administrative tasks through an integrated Active Directory service interface. Although EAS is able to satisfy the most sophisticated archive needs, customers find that EAS is exceptionally easy to work with at implementation and in a migration project, in addition to day-to-day operations. ZANTAZ EAS for Exchange 2

5 INTRODUCTION Many organizations plan to migrate to Microsoft Exchange Server The phasing out of Exchange Server 5.5, Exchange Server 2000, and Exchange Server 2003, along with the benefits of new functionality and manageability, make the move inevitable. Changing a corporate mail system, however, is potentially one of the most disruptive and risky ventures any organization can undertake. The prospect of jeopardizing the organization s basic communications fabric and the resulting impact on service delivery is quite daunting. To minimize these risks, companies are spending a great amount of time and money on training, planning, and testing, often with consultancy and third-party software tools. Migrations from Lotus Notes to Exchange Server 2007 are fast, stable, and less risky with EAS. One of the biggest practical problems to tackle is the sheer volume of data most organizations have (including public folders, messages, tasks, and calendars). In fact, expert advice on migrating to Exchange Server 2007 normally starts with clean up current server computers running Exchange Server. Microsoft itself recommends that outdated files be deleted from the message store. In an attempt to do this, users may be instructed to delete messages or resort to using personal archive (PST) files to archive older messages. Administrators may also elect to delete messages over a certain age, knowing that they exist on backup tapes. Deletion of messages and the use of PST files to accommodate a migration are unacceptable for a number of reasons. (See Migration of PST Files for more information.) This document is intended to provide an insight into how archiving, and specifically ZANTAZ Enterprise Archive Solution (EAS ) for Exchange, can be incorporated into your chosen migration strategy in order to reduce the time and risks involved, as well as protect business and individual interests. EAS for Exchange is a complete archiving solution for Exchange Server environments. It offers robust onsite archiving, searching, and storage management features that enable total lifecycle management of records to meet demanding legal and business data management needs. For Microsoft customers considering updating their servers to Exchange Server 2007, ZANTAZ EAS for Exchange also offers a streamlined and simplified migration process. By archiving a company s previous versions of Exchange Server prior to upgrading, and removing duplicate data (through Single Instance Storage) and compressing it, EAS helps companies significantly decrease their overall size of information store. This results in a reduction of process time, faster recovery, and much greater stability throughout the migration process. In addition to easing the migration process and reducing server costs, EAS offers organizations other benefits, including: Reducing Exchange Server storage sizes and cascading data throughout its Information Life Cycle to more cost-effective storage media, thereby reducing storage costs and disaster recovery times. (Disaster recovery refers to coordinated activities that enable the recovery of IT/business systems due to a disruption.) Protecting data for business and legal reasons, saving significant costs. Centralizing retention for compliance readiness. Leveraging knowledge investment, and making the most of your IT and HR investment. Discovering, archiving, and eliminating PST Files to reduce the amount of unmanaged data. These benefits are explored in more detail later in this paper. ZANTAZ EAS for Exchange 3

6 DIFFERENT MIGRATION STRATEGIES There are a number of traditional approaches to migrating to Exchange Server 2007, each with its own associated benefits and risks. These include: 1. An in-place upgrade, which converts the old Exchange Server to the new one on the same server. 2. A Move Mailbox migration, where mailboxes are moved to an already commissioned new Exchange Server 2007 server. 3. A phased, or swing, migration, where the old Exchange Servers and new Exchange Server 2007 servers effectively run in parallel, and users are migrated gradually. Approach number one, the in-place upgrade, involves upgrading to Windows Server 2003 Enterprise x64 Edition, removing Exchange Server 2003, renaming databases and directories, and converting databases. It is a labor-intensive process and subject to operator error, so the ability to roll back an unsuccessful upgrade is essential. The benefits of this approach are that you need no additional servers (assuming your current hardware can support Windows Server 2003 x64/exchange Server 2007), and you can complete the upgrade process in a weekend (depending upon your information store size). Approach number two, the move Mailbox migration, gives you the luxury of having a new Windows Server x64 and Exchange Server 2007 environment to do lots of testing in without impacting users or risking the corporate service. The downside to this approach is the additional cost and the fact that you have to move mailboxes, which can involve considerable time and risk. Approach number three, the phased migration, appeals to larger organizations that have restricted budgets and many users to migrate. The theory is that maintaining the old Exchange Server 2003 service and the new Exchange Server 2007 service in parallel will make it possible to move users at a more leisurely pace, individually or department by department. With the phased migration approach, only a few new servers need be purchased because existing ones can be redeployed during the migration process. In practice, however, many sites that have chosen this path have experienced great difficulty in maintaining both environments side by side. For example, Site Replication Services (SRS) with Exchange Server 2003 cannot be installed or doesn t work in an Exchange Server cluster. So to support SRS it is necessary to deploy an additional Exchange Server 2007 server and make it the bridgehead between the two environments. This complicates the configuration and adds to the expense. ARCHIVING AS PART OF YOUR STRATEGY Whatever approach you take, it is clear that tackling the size of the Exchange Server information store (IS) to be moved or upgraded is paramount, because: The smaller your IS, the quicker the migration process will be, and migrating outside of core office hours becomes a possibility. The smaller your IS, the faster you will be able to recover your old Exchange Server service if your upgrade goes wrong for whatever reason. Again, this makes upgrading (as well as having a contingency plan) a possibility outside of working hours. The smaller your IS, the more stable your old Exchange Server will be to migrate or upgrade from, and you will be able to eliminate IS corruption issues. In short, archiving is the most effective way of making your IS smaller. By using EAS to reduce the size of your existing Exchange Server stores in advance of migrating, the time taken to convert the message store is considerably less, and the whole process is made faster, simpler, and less risky. You can also reduce the size and the number of server computers running Exchange Server you will need once you ve migrated. This is because EAS can be used to archive older messages onto less expensive systems rather than clog up the disks of expensive, high-end Exchange Servers. ZANTAZ EAS for Exchange 4

7 HOW DOES IT WORK? Selecting Items to Archive Using EAS, organizations can select specific messages to be archived, moving them from their IS and onto an alternative storage area on the network, where they remain seamlessly accessible to users. See What Happens to Archived Messages? for more information on the user perspective. While other solutions archive according to mailbox size and message age, EAS allows organizations to apply extremely flexible archive rules that reflect both quantitative and businessoriented needs. Multiple criteria can be considered, including message size, date sent, date last accessed, subject, sender, category, read/unread, folder, and so on. For example, EAS can be set NOT to archive messages that are unread or of a certain category. It can also be set to first archive all messages that are over a certain size and have not been accessed for a given time period. Example migration archive policies might be: Archive everything older than six months and anything older than one month that has an attachment of > 1Mb in size and has been read, or Archive everything that relates to Project X and is older than one year. Reaching the Optimum Information Store Size A good rule of thumb in deciding how much data to archive before migrating is to estimate your mailbox transfer rate (in Mb/hour). Alternatively, if you plan to upgrade without interrupting normal system operation, consider your backup/restore times. Knowing this information makes it easy to calculate the size your IS needs to be in order to migrate, or upgrade and roll back, within your given window of opportunity. To assist with the planning process, EAS includes a reporting facility called EAS Estimator. This facility profiles the messages on your existing mail servers, reporting on the number of messages, average size, percentage of message store growth over time, and so on. You can use this information to pre-empt the results of different archive policies, as well as to calculate the size of server computers running Exchange Server needed when you migrate. TIME BENEFIT Estimated time to migrate Before archiving: 76 hours With EAS: 22 hours Reduction of more than 70 percent SIZE BENEFIT Size of Exchange message store Before archiving: 85 GB With EAS: 22 GB Reduction of more than 75 percent STORAGE BENEFIT Space required to store messages In Exchange: 63 GB In EAS archive: 31.5GB Reduction of more than 50 percent ADDITIONAL BENEFITS Backup times reduced by over 50 percent Automated archiving throughout the business Greater control of database size and growth Enhanced storage, audit trail, and management ZANTAZ EAS for Exchange 5

8 Phasing in the Archive Service EAS has the flexibility to archive messages but defer the time at which archived messages are actually removed from the Exchange Server 2003 server(s).this allows organizations to choose whether they offer an archive service to users while they are still on Exchange Server 2003 or wait until they are migrated to the new Exchange Server 2007 server. If the latter option is chosen, users will not see any change until migration to Exchange Server 2007 has been completed, at which point all previously archived messages appear as shortcuts. From an administrative perspective, archiving is carried out in advance, but without deleting messages from Exchange Server The process of deleting from Exchange Server 2003 and creating shortcuts is then carried out just before migration. In addition, updating the desktop to use the new Exchange Server 2007 service and the new archive service can also be achieved in a single pass. Note that where EAS has already been deployed to provide archive services for Exchange Server 2003, EAS archive policies can be set to archive more aggressively (for example, archive everything older than one week) when nearing migration time. This will reduce the live message store to an absolute minimum for the migration period. Then, once the migration has taken place, EAS archive rules can be reverted to the usual archive policy (for example, everything older than two months). WHAT HAPPENS TO ARCHIVED MESSAGES? messages (and optionally public folders, PST files, journals, calendars, and tasks) selected for archiving are copied from the Information Store (IS) and placed in a separate storage location on your network. The archive storage area can be hosted on SAN, NAS, or any other file storage that can be seen from Windows, such as NFS or NTFS. When writing messages to the archive, EAS maintains single instance storage (SIS), which is lost when using mailbox migration tools. It also compresses messages. The result is a storage savings of as much as 80 percent of the equivalent held in the IS. The User Perspective Users seamlessly access archived messages and their attachments by going to their familiar Microsoft Office Outlook or Outlook Web Access (OWA) views, or even their mobile devices, where they will see all their archived messages in the same way as unarchived mail, without changing their folder structure. Even when EAS is used as part of a compliant archive, the end-user view is not impacted, and archived mail is retrieved with a double-click, just like any other mail. EAS Search is a plug-in to Outlook and OWA and is invoked from those two views by a click of an added icon on the Outlook or OWA toolbar. Searching the archive is extremely fast and powerful, and can be based on the contents of message and attachments in any combination with date ranges, and other fields such as To, From, Folder, and Subject. User retrieval occurs without using the EAS server as a component. User requests take place over HTTP fronted by Windows Server 2003 Internet Information Services, and the archive is catalogued for content searching using Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server or EAS Search. This open, Internet-oriented architecture offers benefits in many areas, including scalability, resilience, and ease of implementing future functionality. The following sections look at the additional business and operational benefits to be gained through introducing ZANTAZ EAS. ZANTAZ EAS for Exchange 6

9 REDUCED SERVER AND STORAGE REQUIREMENTS Many enterprises have ended up deploying more server computers running Exchange Server than they would have liked in order to maintain service levels and meet disaster-recovery needs. Exchange Server 2007 offers the attraction of Information Store (IS) partitioning (to ease backup/restore) and active clustering (making it capable of supporting more mailboxes more effectively). A migration to Exchange Server 2007 thus presents an opportunity to consolidate the number of servers used, thereby benefiting from reduced hardware and administrative costs. The potential is short-lived, however, for the following reasons: It is a fact of life that most organizations storage requirements will continue to grow exponentially. So even separate Information Stores will become too big to manage over time. Those enterprises that have not used PST files (or other measures to cap mailbox sizes) will find that their new Exchange Server 2007 server is immediately populated with legacy messages from their old Exchange Server 2003 servers. Single Instance Storage (SIS) is lost when migrating existing mailboxes from Exchange Server 2003 servers, and many organizations will find that their overall storage requirements increase significantly as a consequence of migrating. By archiving older messages, organizations can reduce the amount of storage space taken up on their new Exchange Server 2007 server, and keep the amount reduced in the future, thus benefiting from lower storage costs and faster backup and disaster-recovery times. Typical storage volume savings are in the region of 50 to 80 percent of the equivalent Information Store and PST storage. Furthermore, storage costs per GB stored are decreased by an effective ILM approach. PROTECTION OF DATA FOR BUSINESS AND LEGAL REASONS Many organizations recognize that deleting messages to ease a migration presents several risks, including: Deleting messages can impact business competitiveness (by losing valuable intellectual property). Imposing mailbox limits and ultimatums on users to delete messages can reduce worker satisfaction and productivity (users don t like quotas). Deleting messages can create legal issues, because they are admissible before a court of law. Deleting some or all messages (even using an upgrade as an excuse) is risky at best and in contempt of court at worst. Using PST files creates many administrative and storage space issues. PST files can also lead to data loss because of their lack of reliability and central control. EAS provides a centrally managed archive service that enables enterprises to achieve the goals of data reduction and the long-term retention of valuable business information. EAS lets you clean up your information store without deletion. For example, it helps you remove mailboxes that are no longer used, while protecting their intellectual content. By automatically and intelligently archiving messages, EAS avoids the overhead associated with users spending hours engaged in mailbox housekeeping activities. Once archived, all messages remain highly accessible and searchable to users (subject to Exchange Server security), thus leveraging your investment in . The EAS archive is extremely secure and messages are archived in a way that cannot be tampered with (thus improving its evidential weight in a court of law). Any and all messages can be discovered during litigation preparation. Without an archive system from which messages can be methodically searched and extracted, your entire Exchange Server and backups may be seized for analysis. ZANTAZ EAS for Exchange 7

10 LEVERAGING KNOWLEDGE INVESTMENT A great deal of corporate knowledge takes the form of electronic mail. Quotations, proposals, ITTs, orders and invoices, holiday and meeting requests all are being received, sent, and forwarded around the organization in the form of electronic mail. Public Folders and based threaded discussions are vital mechanisms for garnering and sharing knowledge. In addition, individuals will build personal folders of related information. This information is important to the individual and is an organizational asset that can give a business its competitive edge. The following sections outline the specific capabilities offered by EAS to protect and leverage the e- mail asset. Powerful, Intelligent Searching EAS Discovery, a key add-on product to the ZANTAZ EAS solution, enables case managers and legal researchers to search across the entire enterprise archive for messages related to a specific legal or regulatory matter. The product features sophisticated search capabilities to ensure that all potentially relevant material is discovered. When a search result is generated, the product enables the team to rapidly review the information without launching native applications. Reviewers can subject documents to a litigation hold to prevent their deletion from the archive, and can attach one or more tags to indicate their status relative to the matter at hand. Finally, EAS Discovery enables the documents to be produced in a format that is suitable for transfer to the requesting party or loading into a litigation management environment such as ZANTAZ Introspect. Easy Mailbox Reclamation EAS makes it possible for individual mailboxes to be archived and later restored. This capability may be useful when a computer is lost or stolen, when a mailbox gets corrupted, or when an individual leaves a company and someone new takes over his or her role. As an alternative to performing a bulk restore, if a user has Exchange Server permissions to view the contents (or certain folders) of someone else s mailbox, then the same permissions will be transferred to viewing what has been archived, which in many cases would obviate the need for a bulk restore. Shared Access to Archived Information EAS also makes it easy for groups of users to have secure access to the contents of shared or public folders that have been archived. This is ideal for project-related and technical support teams that may need to refer to similar past cases or support queries. EAS automatically transfers the access privileges granted by Exchange Server administrators or individuals to access of the contents of the archive. This eases the administration of security significantly. ZANTAZ EAS for Exchange 8

11 ELIMINATING PST FILES PST files are notoriously problematic. If you are already using PST files, you will be familiar with the many problems they cause, such as lack of central control, frequent corruptions, inefficient storage usage, and slow user access. PST files are also tremendously inefficient and expensive to store and back up. Furthermore, it is difficult or impossible for an organization to effectively control the retention and disposition of information distributed in network PST files, and it is extremely costly and timeconsuming to find and produce this information when required for discovery purposes. Many enterprises have collections of PST files that have grown over the years; these companies are desperate to consolidate and centrally manage these files. The introduction of a larger and more powerful Exchange Server 2007 message store might seem to present a good opportunity to get rid of PST files by migrating them into the new message store. However, migration using conventional tools causes considerable problems. These include the loss of single-instance storage (leading to a huge increase in information store size) and the physical difficulty involved in collating PSTs from wherever they are located. By using the EAS PST Migrator, organizations are able to selectively migrate the contents of all existing PST files from local hard disks or network file services into a central archive area. Users can still access that data when they are working offline, because EAS archives messages in the central archive or, as another option, locally on their computers. Single Instance Storage is restored and space savings of up over 80 percent can be realized. In addition, the EAS PST Migrator automatically locates PST files, thus eliminating the time and cost overhead involved in manually locating PST files. NEW FEATURES IN MICROSOFT EXCHANGE SERVER 2007 EAS is ideal for migrations as well as the provisioning of long-term, Exchange Server integrated archive services. The product also makes use of the enhanced journaling capabilities of Exchange Server Journaling can now be accomplished by database, distribution list, or user. As a result, EAS customers can choose to journal all messages or only those sent internally or externally. This makes discovery and archive searches much more productive. Another Exchange Server 2007 feature is Managed Folders, which gives users the ability to organize messages into Microsoft Office Outlook folders that are managed by an administrator. An automated process scans the Inbox and these folders, and then retains, deletes, or journals communications based on certain compliance requirements. Through this feature, archived messages and attached files appear as shortcuts in Outlook and Outlook Web Access. Exchange Server 2007 also contains new and better data classification features, which provide for better handling of metadata. These new functions integrate well with the kinds of tools required by enterprise compliance and archiving applications. For example, with Exchange Server 2007, administrators can control retention period policies and physical locations of document stores. By doing that, they can choose how and when to provide users with transparent access to their e- mail information. ZANTAZ EAS for Exchange 9

12 CONCLUSION Many organizations have so much data on their Exchange Servers that the prospect of upgrading or migrating to Exchange Server 2007 during nonoffice hours is virtually impossible. The alternative of migrating users gradually by building a hybrid environment can be costly, fraught with problems, and stressful for users, administrators, computers, and the network. Although third-party tools are available to assist with migration, most sites find that they have the inhouse skills (combined with Microsoft-supplied tools, lots of planning, and testing) to complete a migration as long as they can conquer the data-size issue. For many organizations, deleting messages to reduce the amount of data to be migrated is not an option because of business competitiveness, legal issues, worker satisfaction, and productivity. The use of personal archives (PST) files is also not an option for providing long-term storage. This is because PST files are notoriously problematic, and most companies are keen on moving away from them. ZANTAZ Enterprise Archive Solution (EAS) provides a centrally managed, rules-based archiving service that tackles the issues of migration, long-term data protection, and PST files. By archiving messages before moving them to Exchange Server 2007, organizations can dramatically reduce the size of their information stores to the point at which upgrades or migrations can be achieved within a practical time frame (for example, over the course of a weekend). Powerful user search and retrieval capabilities, together with an open, highly scalable architecture, mean EAS will also protect and leverage your corporate assets during your migration period and for many years to come. Whatever the situation, you should not let the technical problems surrounding the upgrade of your corporate systems be an excuse for losing valuable messages to a series of unmanageable personal archives (PST files) or, even worse, the wastebasket. About ZANTAZ ZANTAZ, Inc. provides content archiving and electronic discovery solutions to global companies of all sizes in every industry. The company has more than 450 employees and is headquartered in Pleasanton, California, with satellite offices in Boston, Massachusetts; New York City; London, England; and Ottawa, Canada. ZANTAZ customers use the company s solutions to archive, manage, review, and produce messages and other electronic files for storage optimization, regulatory compliance, and litigation purposes. Its solutions also enable companies to proactively manage their compliance with legal, regulatory, and business policy requirements. ZANTAZ is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and has worked directly with Microsoft to develop its content archiving and compliance software solutions. ZANTAZ worked with Microsoft to develop a newly enhanced version of the ZANTAZ Enterprise Archive Solution (EAS) for Exchange, a software solution that relies on Exchange Server 2007 as its key component. ZANTAZ, Inc. Phone: (800) This whitepaper is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. Published January 2007 ZANTAZ EAS for Exchange 10