Risk and Complexity in Recovering Exchange 2003 Servers and Data

With Microsoft’s intentions to discontinue Mainstream Support for Exchange 2003 on April 14, companies that have not purchased an extended support package will be exposed to increased risk and complexity in recovering Exchange 2003 servers and data in the event of a failure. Others will be migrating to Exchange 2007 in droves, posing a number of challenges for email system administrators.
 
“This deadline is not very far off, so it makes sense that organisations using Exchange 2003 invest time and effort to mitigate any risks that could affect email service availability,” said Dave Hunt, CEO at C2C, a leading provider of email and file solutions. “Any system downtime incurs considerable cost in lost productivity and corporate credibility.”
 
Microsoft recommends its customers migrate to Exchange 2007. During this upgrade, all mailbox data within the legacy Exchange 2003 Server would typically be migrated into the new Exchange 2007 Server. Since a migration will copy old, infrequently accessed, or fixed/static email data, it may be a time consuming and inefficient process depending on the volume of inactive data. The excessive bulk of this data will also impact performance and capacity on the new servers, and increase backup and restore times.
 
Using an advanced email archiving solution prior to a migration delivers two distinct advantages:

• It identifies old or unnecessary email data so administrators can take informed, intelligent actions on whether to remove, archive, or migrate the data. This simplifies and streamlines migration to Exchange 2007.
• It retains archived email data in a format that can be accessed in the future to comply with various regulatory requirements and for e-discovery purposes. This eliminates any need for support or updates to legacy Exchange 2003 systems.

"Companies using Exchange 2003 will find it easy and secure to migrate to Exchange 2007 with C2C’s Archive One," said Hunt. By identifying and managing unnecessary data, Archive One slashes migration time by as much as 80 percent. Archive One also enables administrators to ‘bulk remove’ unwanted data before running an archive or migrate operation, and de-duplicates archived messages and attachments.
 
Once Exchange 2003 data has been identified (traditionally based on age) and archived, users still have unhindered access to it via substituted ‘link’ or ‘stub’ messages placed within the mailboxes. Archive One also provides advanced data discovery capabilities and can create policies to grant or restrict access to archived email.
 
Following a migration with email archiving, Exchange 2007 servers will be much more efficient by maximizing data storage usage and performance. Backup and restore times will be similarly improved by significantly reducing the storage footprint of the email server. Email archiving provides ongoing benefits after the migration such as mailbox size and quota management so users no longer need to store data in PST files, and sophisticated search capabilities to enforce policies on inappropriate email content. While Exchange 2007 includes limited archiving in the form of Managed Folders and Journaling, these features do not provide a full solution for compliance nor storage management.