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Whether or not someone qualifies as a computer nerd can be defined by the number of O’Reilley Media books owned. For those not in the know, O’Reilley Media publishes technology related non-fiction books. These books are written on information technology topics by experts in the field and these books are often considered the unequivocal resource on the topic covered.

Section 24.5 of Backup & Recovery, 1st Edition by W. Curtis Preston and published by O’Reilley Media in January of 2007 contains the following text:

“Beyond backing up data, organizations must also develop a strategy for archiving data. Both are integral components of an effective data protection strategy and necessitate a clear understanding of the business value of data (archiving maybe even more so than backup).

When executed correctly, archiving not only can save organizations money but it can also be a lifesaver, especially for those requiring access to historical information for regulatory compliance or audit purposes. Conversely, when archiving is performed incorrectly, it can cost a company dearly in terms of lost revenue, fines, and other penalties.”

 

Backups

 

A backup is basically a secondary copy of your primary data stored at another location in case the original is damaged. The backup is usually done daily to prevent losing more than 24 hours worth of work. The backup is usually stored offsite, to protect against a large disaster at the original site. Additionally, most sites only keep at most two backup copies of data, which are often overwritten after audting has occured.

If the primary data is damaged, deleted, or corrupted, it can be restored if the problem is found before the backup of the damaged, deleted, or corrupted data is destroyed.

If your e-mail server fails or the building that it is located in is destroyed, most organizations can use their backup of that e-mail server to restore the server on different hardware at a different location. Because the backup will usually be at least 24 hours old, some data will have been lost.

Additionally, a backup can usually be used to restore specific files that were accidentally deleted or corrupted, provided that the files are restored prior to the backup containing those files are overwritten or destroyed due to lack of storage space available for backing up data.

 

Archives

 

Archives are not copies of the primary data, but rather are the primary data itself, offloaded to a secondary site for storage. The system where the data was offloaded then becomes a secondary storage of the current working set of data. Most archiving systems will catalogue the data for easy retrieval of specific files.

Once a plan for data archiving is implemented, an organization decides what is archived, and for how long. Then data that is tagged to be archived can not be deleted, through policy enforcement against both accidental and intential deletion.

Additionally, archives are backed up.

 

E-mail archiving benefits

 

Performing e-mail archiving of all e-mail would mean that your e-mail server no longer stores the primary copy of data. If the e-mail server is lost, no e-mail data is lost.

If your users want to delete e-mail from their inboxes, they’re no longer deleting company data, but rather just a current working copy.

E-mail servers typically contain a wide variety of data stored in many different types of stores. Your e-mail server administrator likely doesn’t have the capability to quickly find a specific e-mail message without access to the recipient’s inbox. If the recipient is unknown, this makes it difficult to locate an e-mail message by subject. Due to the cataloguing done by e-mail archiving systems, e-mail can be quickly located.

 

SpamStopsHere’s Spool & Suspend feature

 

SpamStopsHere has offered E-mail continuity since September of 2008 through it’s Spool & Suspend feature. This feature allowed customer’s to access their queued e-mail while their e-mail server was unavailable to accept the e-mail. There were significant disadvantages however.

SpamStopsHere uses virtual clusters of e-mail servers to process a customer’s incoming e-mail. If a customer’s e-mail server was unavailable, the e-mail for one customer’s domain was typically queued in multiple locations. In order to allow customers to access the e-mail, the only copies of the queued e-mail had to be delivered to one e-mail store first, by enabling the Spool & Suspend feature. The e-mail store of queued messages could then be accessed, but only by a single e-mail administrator. Additionally, there was no way to respond to e-mail messages. This e-mail store was backed up every hour, to ensure against loss, which was a greater risk due to the e-mail all being in one location.

 

SpamStopsHere’s RestorEmail

 

In the first week of March in 2009, SpamStopsHere rolled out the e-mail continuity portion of it’s new RestorEmail product. This product archived incoming e-mail for a domain for up to 7 days. Unlike the Spool & Suspend feature, this new product does complete e-mail archiving of e-mail and leaves the storage in the cloud computing infrastructure which maintains reliability and accessibility. Each e-mail message that is archived is stored in at least three different locations and an array of administrative servers provides global access to these messages. Additionally, end-user access was added, and messages could be replied to, as e-mail sending features were added.

In June of 2009, SpamStopsHere rolled out the full e-mail archiving product, with more import and export options to get e-mail messages into and out of the cloud computing infrastructure. Additionally, messages could now be stored indefinitely, allowing SpamStopsHere to manage the integrity of your domain’s e-mail data archives through it’s fully managed system.

With hurricane season starting for many geographic areas, and with recent events possibly impacting your local infrastructure, can your organization afford to not have an e-mail archiving solution like RestorEmail to ensure business e-mail continuity?