Be Prepared for Email Archive Migration

Just about every week I see another customer who is asking for help with email archive migration. It makes sense. Many customers have been running email archival on their Exchange Server for over 5 years and it is time for a new solution.

The major area of difficulty with regards to email archive migration is email “stubbing”. By stubbing, I am mean the process whereby the archive solution removes all, or part, of the email in the Exchange Store and leave behind a stub file.

Before archive data can be migrated to a new archive server, email stubs must be “re-united” or “reversed”. Sometimes it is impractical to put the email back together because of the space constraints on Exchange. In other cases, the archive solution does not provide the tools to perform the stub reversal.

If you are considering a new email archive solution, I recommend that you take into consideration the following migration features and issues.

Make sure the email archive product has tools to reverse the stubbing process.

Make sure PST export tools are available to assist the migration process.

Consider the amount of archive data that will accumulate in the archive, say over a 5 year period, and calculate if there will be space on Exchange to reverse the stubs.

For best results, find an email archive solution like Mimosa Systems that keeps a complete copy of email and attachments in the archive so stub reversal is not required.

All of this depends on the possibility of switching email archive vendors in the future. Maybe you will stay with your current vendor, but should you ever decide to switch email archive vendors, then it is best to be prepared.