Enterprise Vault for Exchange 6.0
Symantec's Enterprise Vault consists of the Enterprise Vault Server core product and multiple modules that you can plug into the vault to archive various data sources. I reviewed Enterprise Vault Mailbox Management Advanced Edition, which comprises Enterprise Vault Server plus the Exchange Mailbox Archiving, PST Migrator, Exchange Public Folder Archiving, and Offline Vault modules. Other modules include Exchange Journal Archiving, SharePoint Archiving, and File System Archiving. You use the Microsoft Management Console (MMC) to manage all the modules and the policies that control which data is placed in the vault.
Enterprise Vault excels in the area of PST file management. It can discover PSTs by searching the registry of systems for pointers to PSTs in Outlook profiles or by searching shares for PST files. An Outlook plug-in included with Enterprise Vault can also publish the location of any PST files used by Outlook to Enterprise Vault. PST Migrator can report on the contents of discovered PSTs and archive their contents to the vault.
Enterprise Vault can replace messages in mailboxes or PSTs with stub messages. If the Outlook plug-in is installed when a user opens an archived message, the original message is retrieved from the vault automatically. Without the Outlook plug-in, the user will see part of the original message in the stub message and a URL to the archived message. Stub messages can be customized to control how many characters of the original message are retained and if any additional text should be inserted. The Outlook plug-in and Offline Vault module also provide support for accessing archived messages when offline.
The policy support in the Enterprise Vault UI limits you to controlling what's archived based on item age or size or a mailbox utilization percentage, with some support for exceptions. The UI also limits you to applying policies to the entire organization or to specific AD organizational units (OUs). For more granular policy support, you must create custom XML ruleset files.
Unique among the products in this review, Enterprise Vault can use the permissions defined in the AD on mailboxes to control which users can access which mailbox data in the vault. A user who has access to another user's mailbox in Exchange will automatically be given access to that mailbox's data in the vault.
Administrators can carry out searches in the MMC console, as Figure 4 shows. End users use a Web page to search the vault and place items in collections, or baskets, and they can view their data in the vault in the same folder structure as Outlook's. The offline support of Enterprise Vault can be controlled centrally or by users. For example, users could choose to keep only the last 90 days of archived messages in an offline vault on their systems or an administrator could configure a policy so that the last year of archived messages was kept in the offline vault.
Summary
Enterprise Vault 6.0
Editor's Choice
PROS: Extensive support for archiving from multiple data sources; seamless offline support; excellent support for PST archiving and removal (in the PST Migrator module); components can be distributed across multiple servers for scalability
CONS: Creating custom polices requires custom XML ruleset files; no admin Web console; involved installation and configuration process
RATING: 4.5 out of 5
PRICE: Mailbox Management Advanced Edition is $21,475 for 500 users
RECOMMENDATION: Enterprise Vault should be high on the list of email archiving products to look at for medium to large organizations.
CONTACT: Symantec * 650-527-8000 * http://www.symantec.com |
