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TNCI improves Exchange Recovery and reduces risk of .PST files with Mimosa NearPoint |
“With NearPoint installed, my SLA for Exchange recovery has dropped from 24-hours |
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Since 1991, TNCI has been a leading national telecommunications provider. TNCI continuously delivers an unmatched balance of industry experience and stability making TNCI a leader in providing communications solutions to business organizations. TNCI is based in Boston, MA and has 80 employees.
TNCI is a leading provider of telecommunication services to businesses. The Network Administrator, Michael DiBenedetto, supports eighty employees with Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 for messaging services. Currently Michael has implemented mailbox quotas of 130 MB each and the total Exchange Store size is 12 GB. “My users rely on their email for all of their important business communication. We have an inside sales force that support an outside sales channel and email is the form of communication that links everyone together,” said Michael. “It is common for email to contain business agreements, letters of authorization, quotes and signatures. Some of my users have been saving email since 1998 and have GB’s of total stored email.” Email data that is current is stored on the Exchange Server and all other email data is stored in local Personal Store (.PST) Files.
The factors which originally drove Michael DiBenedetto, Network Administrator, to look for an email archiving were two instances where systems were damaged and the .PST files stored on the user disk drives were at risk. In the first case, Michael was able to restore the .PST file from the failed disk drive with the help of a data restoration service. The cost to recover the lost .PST file was $1500. In the second case, the damage and cost prevented the recovery process and the PST files were never recovered.
In both situations, Michael was painfully aware of the lack of data protection in his organization for data stored on laptop computers, including .PST files that contain valuable company email. Michael was aware that the majority of employees were using .PST files and that there is over 90 GB of total email being stored in .PST files, as best as Michael can estimate. “I did a quick survey and determined that at least 40 GB of company email exists in .PST files,” said Michael. “A more extensive search has shown that estimate only covered half of the data we need to archive. Without any laptop data protection, I am concerned that more .PST files could be lost or stolen.”
The solution that TNCI uses to protect its Exchange Server is a backup service provided by AmeriVault and it provides a once-a-day backup of the Exchange database files for disaster recovery. “In the areas of Exchange recovery,” said Michael, “I wanted to protect my Exchange information at a frequency greater than once-a-day and I wanted to be able to restore individual messages and mailboxes without having to restore a complete Exchange database. Knock on wood, but I have not had to perform a major Exchange recovery yet, but I am concerned that if the need did arise, I might lose email data from the time between backups and the time to recover would be significant – two potential problems that would significantly impact my organization.”
Due to the business content that email contains at TNCI, it is critical that authorized users have access to historical email information to resolve business issue and customer disputes. “In areas of customer dispute resolution, email is often the source of information to verify what promises were made,” said Michael. “Unless the email is still on the Exchange Server, we have no way to access or search these historical email records. With no idea of where to search or what time period, it would be like searching for a needle in a haystack. In these situations, we rely solely on the word of our customers but would prefer documentation to support these claims.” Better management of historical email records is needed to improve access and be able to quickly search old emails to find important business related information.
For email archiving, Michael DiBenedetto, talked to many software and service providers and closely reviewed a half-a-dozen email archive solutions. Michael selected Mimosa NearPoint for Microsoft Exchange Server to address his .PST file challenges, for email archiving and to improve Exchange recovery. “I was immediately impressed with the solution from Mimosa,” said Michael. “It provided the tools to manage my .PST file problems and email archiving and it does not require any agent software on Exchange Server. I was also impressed that it does not rely on MAPI for its archiving processing jobs. The overhead to configure and use MAPI for brick-level backups is inefficient and cumbersome for our environment and we would not implement a MAPI-based solution in our organization.”
The Mimosa NearPoint solution installed at TNCI easily with assistance by telephone from Mimosa Service. “The service and support at Mimosa has been great,” said Michael. “I only had one example where I had to speak with my service representative to fix a configuration parameter we missed before the installation. Overall I found the documentation to be well organized and very comprehensive. The software has a very professional “enterprise” look and feel and without any agent software on the Exchange Server and without any client software on the desktops, the overall installation went very quickly and smoothly.”
The Mimosa NearPoint Application Shadowing process is the continuous data protection method, based on Exchange Transaction Log Files that NearPoint uses to protect all Exchange data. Following a ESE Full Backup of all Exchange Stores, NearPoint copies each new log file in real-time to the NearPoint server where the files are protected. “The technology that Mimosa developed using Exchange Transaction Log Files is clearly a differentiation from similar products on the market,” said Michael. “It provides full capture of Exchange mailbox information and enables quick search and discovery of all the message data in the archive.”
NearPoint provides multiple levels of Exchange recovery, all with simple, point-and-click operation. “With NearPoint installed, my SLA for Exchange recovery has dropped from 24-hours to less than one hour. I can restore a full Storage Group, database, or mailbox with just ‘one-click’ using NearPoint. The big surprise to me was that NearPoint provides true Exchange disaster recovery capability in the same product. Instead of having to purchase multiple products for Exchange data protection and archiving, NearPoint provided me with one single solution that can do it all,” said Michael.
For individual message recovery and to search across multiple mailboxes, NearPoint Self-Service Access™ is a personalized search application that users and auditors access via Outlook or OWA. Using one of three powerful search tools, users can quickly search and browse their entire archive mailbox. NearPoint is unique as for email archive solutions because it is the only solution that does not rely on MAPI or journaling to capture data from Exchange. For internal investigations that involve email records, TNCI can save thousands of dollars by not having to rely on 3rd-party discovery service providers or by not having to search old backup tapes. All future search and discovery exercises that involve email will be performed on NearPoint quickly and for no additional cost.
To manage the existing .PST files in TNCI’s organization, NearPoint provides PST Archiving that gives users and Michael the ability to “browse” and copy .PST files to the NearPoint server where they are indexed, processed for single-instance storage and added to the central email archive. PST information is displayed with the original folder hierarchy which is familiar to users. “I am pleased knowing that my .PST file data is now being centrally managed and protected in the NearPoint archive,” said Michael. “All my users can access this information quickly for search and discovery.”
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