With the introduction of Exchange 2010, many corporations are considering how vital backups and archives are if they implement multiple database copies utilizing database availability groups (DAGs) and leveraging the ability to use cheap disk storage. Microsoft themselves have suggested that with 3, 4 or more copies of the database, there really is no need to back them up any more. Is this suitable for your company as well?
With the complexity of Exchange 2010 archivingemail environments and disaster recovery strategies, it may in fact be something your company can consider. More and more these days, companies have two or more data centers where they will leverage each other for site resiliency. In these situations, having two local copies and another copy or two located elsewhere may in fact be all a company needs to remove the need for back up. Couple that with extended ‘Recovery Deleted Items’ timeframes, backups may be able to be eliminated completely. Certainly something companies should think about and consider when looking at upgrading to Exchange 2010.
With respect to archiving, Exchange 2010 introduced the concept of the personal archiving mailbox, however Exchange 2010 Service Pack 1 due out later this year will provide corporations the ability to have the secondary mail store (archive) for a user to be housed in a separate database. If your primary mail stores are located on SCSI or Tier 1 or Tier 2 storage, having this new capability added with Service Pack 1 will provide even greater benefit to leverage inexpensive SATA disk. In fact with multiple database copies, Microsoft goes so far as to suggest you may want to consider not even using fault tolerance with your disk arrays. If these databases can be kept on Just a Bunch Of Disks (JBOD) media then there too eliminates the need for a proprietary email archiving solution. So with Service Pack 1, it’s one other thing to consider when considering your upgrade to Exchange 2010.
MADSolutions has always focused on keeping email where it belongs…in the email system. To do this, we focused on moving files out to where they belong…in the file system. For many of our customers this capability has allowed them to maintain year’s worth of email in their mailbox without excessive bloat. Now with these new capabilities in Exchange 2010 and the ability to use inexpensive storage, utilizing the flexibility and functionality found in Email Management Server, will provide companies continued capabilities allowing for long term retention of email in the email system where it belongs. Given that MADSolutions does not use any proprietary storage format and uses native Windows APIs and built in Windows functionality, companies can now feel comfortable and confident that using our email management solution will help them manage their email environment effectively.