Storage Technology

• For any amount of data and any number of users
• Field-tested in companies with over 3,000 mailboxes
• No licensing fees for Microsoft SQL Server or other database servers

Scalability

Unlike other archiving products, MailStore Server does not store data in a single database which over time will reach its limit of performance. Instead, a MailStore archive can be composed of any number of individual archive units called file groups. Each file group consists of:

    Embedded Database

Header and administrative information is stored here.

    Full-Text Indexes

These indexes are created per user and make fast searches of emails and file attachments possible.

    Container Files

In these encrypted files with a manageable size of about 8MB the actual data is stored.

Regularly creating new file groups (e.g. quarterly) ensures constantly high performance for searches and archiving emails and can be done manually or automatically. Despite there being several file groups, users only see one overall archive.

Flexible Storage Management

The archive store can be managed flexibly at runtime. Existing parts of the archive, for example, can be moved to other hard drives or network drives without having to disrupt operations.

Screenshots

Storage Locations

Search Indexes

Performance Characteristics

• Archiving performance of up to 1,000 emails per minute
• Reduction of storage requirements through single-instance archiving
• Compression of file attachments
• Tamper-proof storage by using SHA1 hashes
• Internal AES256 encryption of email texts and attachments
• Support of iSCSI, Fibre Channel, NAS and SAN

Easy Backups

Backups can be done using the integrated backup feature or any backup software. The software must simply be configured to include the MailStore data directories which were optimized for incremental backups.

The distribution of the archive among multiple file groups also makes backups easier. Old file groups can be write-protected and thus excluded from the ongoing backup procedure. A one-time backup is sufficient.

Easy Backup Restore

In the event of damage or loss, an existing backup can be restored to a new MailStore Server installation within minutes. Because the backup includes not only all archived emails but also the complete settings (such as existing users and privileges), there is almost no downtime. The recovery can be performed as simple copy procedure in the file system.