MailVault v3.4.12 is available.
This release contains minor fixes and enhancements.
You can upgrade your MailVault installation by going to:
Settings > Core > Auto updates and click on Check for updates
Then simply follow the on-screen instructions.
MailVault v3.4.10 is available.
This is a significant release that enhances privacy handling in MailVault.
It introduces a new user role (sub-admin) and a new user attribute (status).
You can upgrade your MailVault installation by going to:
Settings > Core > Auto updates and click on Check for updates
Then simply follow the on-screen instructions.
MailVault v3.4.6 is available.
This is a minor release with a couple of small fixes and a useful enhancement.
When disk space becomes critically low, MailVault will automatically stop the archiving process (including retrieving of email, if required) and send out an email alert to the administrator. The admin will need to free up space and manually restart the stopped services.
You can upgrade your MailVault installation by going to:
Settings > Core > Auto updates and click on Check for updates
Then simply follow the on-screen instructions.
We already know that organizations using MailVault for email archiving and eDiscovery, are benefiting immensely from the storage efficiency of MailVault’s intelligent archive store.
Just how much that benefit is, is now clearly visible in the new Storage reports, available in MailVault since version 3.4.0. (To view the reports, from the main navigation bar, go to Reports > Storage).
The storage efficiency is tracked over four time-periods:
For each of these, the volume of email processed and the disk space utilized is tracked. The reports show the total email received, deduplicated, filtered and finally archived.
Let’s take a look at the storage report from an actual MailVault installation, for about 100 users, over a 5-week period.
For today and 7 days, the storage is displayed in MB, whereas for 30 days and 365 days, it’s shown in GB.
To conclude the above example, email that would have otherwise occupied 20.50 GB, took up only 4.71 GB in MailVault’s archive. In other words, by using MailVault, this organization saved over 77% of disk usage.
In summary, although disk capacities are increasing and the cost per GB is decreasing, the sheer volume of email that an organization deals with today is increasing. That, compounded with the fact that email will need to be stored for several years, with easy retrievability, quickly adds up to a formidable challenge on the storage front.
A challenge, that we are happy to say, MailVault is geared to handle! 🙂
We’ve been silent on the blog for a while now, but the engine room has been buzzing with activity.
This post breaks our blog-slumber and summarizes the goodness that’s gone into the MailVault v3 series, since the initial v3.0.0 release (in May 2012) up to the current v3.4.0 (July 2013).
v3.0.x
v3.1.x
v3.2.x
v3.3.x
v3.4.0
We will elaborate in more detail in future posts.
Meanwhile, more useful features are being added to your favorite email archiving solution. In case you have any feedback or suggestions, please get in touch.
MailVault is light enough to run on Microsoft Windows XP Pro to backup and archive email.
However, if you have Service Pack 3 installed, you may face an issue running MailVault, caused due to some missing runtime components, which are required. MailVault will probably install cleanly, but will not load when you try to start it.
This is a known issue and resolving it is trivial.
On your Windows XP Pro (with Service Pack 3) machine:
All should be well.
You may also wish to check out our quickstart instructions for installing and configuring MailVault.
In case you need any further assistance, please get in touch with us.
What is IMAP?
IMAP (or IMAP4) stands for Internet Message Access Protocol and allows an email client to access email on a remote mail server. Along with POP3, it is a popular email access and retrieval mechanism.
IMAP was designed basically with the idea of a ‘remote mailbox‘, which means that user’s would be able to leave their email on the server and connect to it from anywhere.
Some of the advantages of IMAP include:
With servers becoming more powerful and the proliferation of smart mobile devices (cell phones, tablets, notebooks, etc.), an increasing number of users are using IMAP for everyday email.
IMAP archiving
If you are using an IMAP email account, the chances are that you have a very large mail box. While your service provider may give you a large amount of disk space, sooner or later it will get exhausted. That’s one reason to backup or archive your mail box. Even if you had an unlimited amount of space, it’s still probably a good idea to backup your email – after all it does contain valuable information.
MailVault makes it trivial to backup and archive IMAP email accounts. An organization can centrally store all corporate communications. It can derive further benefit from huge space savings, thanks to the email de-duplication process and compressed storage, which means that even if there are many copies of an email, only one will be retained and stored in a compressed format. Multiple users can access the email and based on privileges, users can only see their own mail, thus ensuring privacy.
MailVault is an easy to use mail archiving software that makes IMAP archiving a breeze.
You can run MailVault on Windows Server 2003 to backup and archive email.
However, sometimes there is an issue running MailVault on Windows 2003, caused due to some missing runtime components, which are required. MailVault will probably install cleanly, but will not load when you try to start it.
This is a known issue and resolving it is trivial.
On your Windows 2003 server:
All should be well.
You may also wish to check out our quickstart instructions for installing and configuring MailVault.
In case you need any further assistance, please get in touch with us.
More and more people are becoming aware of ‘email archiving’ practices. Email archiving is the process of using a software application (or service), which normally in conjunction with an email server provides a way to centrally store all of an organizations email communications. It also provides a way to search through the archived email messages quickly and easily.
So why would an organization need mail archiving in the first place?
While there can be numerous reasons for a company to use email archiving, here are four important ones:
1. Loads of email
Regardless of the physical size of an organization, if uses a lot of email for business (and these days who doesn’t) then that email contains a lot of valuable information and must be treated as such.
As the amount of email (and information) grow over time, it can get overwhelming to manage properly. New architectures and methodologies are needed to store, manage, search and use this information. Email archival systems are build for this.
2. Compliance
Companies in various industries, especially those in the financial, healthcare, education, and government fields are faced with the task of handling compliance needs concerning data and email management.
With the amount of email increasing exponentially, it’s getting harder to use older methods effectively to monitory and organize all this data. Email archiving systems are very helpful here.
3. Storage & disk space management
Once again the increasing communications eat away at available disk space. Archiving solutions use techniques like single-instance storage (eliminating duplicate email) and compression to save space.
Additionally, a sophisticated email archiving solution will provide other means for space management. For instance email filters can prevent unnecessary email from getting into the archive in the first place; andretention policies allow the organization to set different lifetimes to different types of email (eg. Newsletters to be retained only for 3 months, etc.)
4. Increasing your IT Productivity
In today’s competitive world, an organizations workforce and especially it’s IT department already have a heavy workload. Worrying about email backup and managing long term email storage justs adds to everyone’s woes. By using email archiving software, an organization can automate the collection and storage of email.
A smart email archiving solution allows your IT team to focus on other operational tasks, lowers IT help desk costs by allowing end users to use self-service and allows you mail server to perform better by taking away email storage responsibilities from it.
It doesn’t matter how small or large your organization may be, chances are, you need email archiving.
Note: For a more end-user oriented and an everyday-centric view point of the benefits of email archiving, do have a look at: The need for email archival.
Picture credit: With thanks to Ramberg Media Images.
So you run Postfix and want to have a central backup of all your email. With MailVault, it’s easy.
Let’s assume the following setup:
There are two basic approaches to archiving all email from Postfix into MailVault:
The former is recommended and outlined below.
Method: Postfix stores, MailVault retrieves.
1. Create mailbox
Create a mailbox with email-id as archive@example.com and ensure that it is available over POP3. MailVault will periodically (default is every 10 minutes) retrieve and delete email from this mailbox.
2. Configure Postfix
Assume the Postfix configuration files are in /etc/postfix.
cd /etc/postfix
Edit main.cf – seach for always_bcc and include the following line:
always_bcc = archive@example.com
Save main.cf and reload Postfix
postfix reload
The archive@example.com email id will now start receiving a copy of each message that is received by the Postfix mail system.
Note:
3. Configure MailVault
Now login to MailVault and add a POP3 mail source, which will retrieve email from the archive@example.com mailbox.
Voila! You now have all your email from Postfix being backed up and archived into MailVault.