Release: MailVault v3.4.17

MailVault v3.4.17 is available.

This release modifies and enhances the sub-admin role.

A sub-admin is no longer allowed to delete messages. Additionally, we have introduced a number of privileges, that may optionally be granted to a sub-admin. This adds to overall security, offers greater flexibility to accommodate various organizations policies and overall makes the sub-admin role more convenient.

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.

Release: MailVault v3.4.10

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).

  • The sub-admin can carry out most routine administration tasks. He or she can also search the archive, but cannot view the contents of anyone else’s email.
  • The VIP status for a user, is meant for, well, VIP users: Top management and executives, whose email could contain information of a sensitive nature. Being marked VIP, is like having a protective shield, which makes the email of VIP users more or less untouchable by unauthorized personnel.

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.

Release: MailVault v3.4.6

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.

Monitoring MailVault’s email storage efficiency

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:

  • Today
  • Last 7 days
  • Last 30 days
  • Last 365 days

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!  🙂

What’s new in the MailVault v3 series?

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

  • New restyled user-interface with usability enhancements
  • Auto-discovery of Organizations and People under the new Directory tab
  • Instant searches from Directory (organization and people listings)
  • New ‘Begins with’ clause in Archive Filters
  • Minor fixes and enhancements

v3.1.x

  • Core libraries updated
  • Minor fixes and enhancements

v3.2.x

  • Overall performance improvements
  • Improved memory management
  • Directory searching and pagination improved
  • Restore via POP3 enhanced to handle picky email clients
  • Forward email enhanced to handle picky email clients
  • Fixed minor UI issue when using Chrome

v3.3.x

  • Core upgrades for increased performance
  • Different locations for indexes and email possible
  • MailVault can now run as a Windows Service
  • Minor fixes and enhancements

v3.4.0

  • Email storage and efficiency tracking
  • Restructured Reports
  • Improved indication for ‘new version availability’
  • Multiple minor fixes and enhancements

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 on Windows XP Pro (with Service Pack 3)

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.

MailVault on Microsoft Windows Server 2003

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.

Archiving Email from Postfix into MailVault

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:

  • Company domain is example.com
  • Postfix is running on one server
  • MailVault is running on another server

There are two basic approaches to archiving all email from Postfix into MailVault:

  1. Postfix stores a copy of all email into a mailbox and MailVault picks it up periodically (over say POP3), or
  2. Postfix forwards a copy of all email (via SMTP) to 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:

  • If mail to the BCC address bounces it will be returned to the sender.
  • Automatic BCC recipients are produced only for new mail. To avoid mailer loops, automatic BCC recipients are not generated after Postfix forwards mail internally, or after Postfix generates mail itself.

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.

How to backup and archive email into MailVault

MailVault can backup and archive email in a number of ways.

It can “pull” mail from corporate mail servers and public mail servers, parse multiple mailbox formats, pick up randomly scattered mail from the filesystem and read messages from selected email clients. MailVault can also accept email “pushed” to it via the SMTP protocol.

In cases where there is no mail server running, the MailVault Agent installed on remote machines enables users to backup email from their email clients into MailVault.

Mail sources in MailVault

For those familiar with email, MailVault’s capabilities include:

  • Support for network oriented protocols like POP3, IMAP and SMTP thus ensuring connectivity with any standard corporate email server (Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Notes, Postfix, Qmail, Sendmail, PostMaster, MDaemon, VPOP3, etc.)
  • Support for filesystem based mail sources like Unix mbox, Maildir, regular directories with individual email files (.eml / standard RFC 822 format)
  • Convenient wrappers for public email proividers like GMail, Yahoo, Rediffmail
  • Can read email from email clients like Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express, Windows Mail, Windows Live Mail and Thunderbird
Types of Mail Sources

Inspite of all this power and flexibility, using MailVault is quite simple. Let’s look at setting up a mail source.

Configuring a mail source (Generic steps)

For the MailVault administrator, setting up a mail source simply boils down to the following generic steps:

  1. Go to Settings > Mail Sources
  2. To add a new mail source, click “Add new”
  3. From the drop down list, choose a mail source and press “Create”
  4. Configure the mail source specific settings
  5. Press Test to check if the settings are correct
  6. If all is well, press Save

That’s it. MailVault now begins the backup and archive process.

Configuring a POP3 mail source

Most email servers support copying or journaling all email that flows through them into a mailbox, which is POP3 enabled. MailVault can then periodically pickup email from this ‘archive’ mailbox using the POP3 protocol. This makes the POP3 mail source one of the most popular and recommended ways of using MailVault with your mail server. Let’s see how a POP3mail source is configured.

  • Go to Settings > Mail Sources
  • Click on Add new
  • Choose POP3 from the drop down
Configuring a POP3 mail source

With reference to the image above:

  1. Make the name an easy identifier (espcially if you are going to use multiple mail sources)
  2. Ensure the mail source is enabled (default is ON)
  3. We’d like to delete messages from the POP3 box once retrieved into MailVault
  4. Poll the mail source every 10 minutes
  5. Enter the POP3 mailbox username
  6. Enter the POP3 mailbox password
  7. Provide the host name
  8. Check the port is correct (default is 110)

As a good practice, at this point we recommend highly that you press the Test button. Ensure that you get a “Connection successful” message and then save the mail source.

Get a cup of coffee, sit back and relax while MailVault archives your email… 🙂

Restoring Email from the MailVault archive

A good archiving solution does a good job of backing up your email. An excellent archiving solution does an even better job in letting you retrieve and restore your email.

Let’s show you why MailVault is excellent! 🙂

So you have millions of messages in your MailVault archive. There are basically two ways to retrieve the messages you are interested in.

One-off email retrieval

For one-off information search requirements, you can use the blazingly fast search to locate the message(s) you want. These can then be viewed or forwarded as explained in earlier posts. Being able to retrieve email from within search results can be a very useful feature indeed.

Restoring a user’s email

Now let’s say a user’s email box gets corrupted or his hard disk crashes and he needs his email to be restored. We can restore email for any user, having a single or multiple email ids, over any time range and via multiple methods.

Let’s assume the MailVault administrator is performing the restore. Here’s how easy it is:

  1. Select the user
  2. Choose the user’s email ids that need to be included in the restore
  3. Choose a time range or simply select ‘All mail’
  4. Select how you want the email to be restored

Hit the Restore button and MailVault will do a quick computation and inform you how many messages will be restored. This number is based on the criteria you selected in steps 1-3. You may now choose to continue with the restore by selecting the email restore mode or you could safely abort the restore at this point (if you just wanted to see how many messages would be restored, for instance).

Understanding email restore modes

For complete flexibility, MailVault supports multiple restore methods:

1. Download as .eml files (in a single zipped file)

In this mode the restored email is basically one message per file (each file has a .eml extension), which are all compressed and zipped together into a single file downloadable from the browser itself.

This mode is useful if you need to submit the mail as part of an audit exercise to someone, or when you want the email in a mail-client neutral format. This is ideally suited for a relatively small number of messages.

2. Forward as original (via your mail server)

In this mode the email to be restored is sent back to the user’s primary email address via your corporate email server. The user retrieves email into his email client as usual. The mail is “forwarded as original”, meaning that the orginal sender and date information is preserved – which means the user can apply filters to sort the incoming mail in his email client.

This method is very useful for restoring a remote user’s email (especially if the remote users have no direct access to MailVault). This mode can be used to restore a large number of messages. However keep in mind that if the restore job is large, your mail server will be processing a lot of ‘restored messages’ in addition to it’s regular workload. Hence, for large restore jobs it may be prudent to start the restore at times when the mail server loads are relatively low (like outside work hours).

3. Via POP3 restore service

In this mode the email is restored from MailVault directly into the user’s email client using the POP3 protocol. The user points his email client at MailVault using his MailVault username and password and pulls his mail out. As usual, mail client filters can sort the incoming mail into different folders.

In addition to being able to handle a large amount of email, this mode causes no extra traffic or load on the corporate mail server.

Other settings

Some of the modes have optional alert options wherein MailVault can send out alerts when the restore process is ready. Additionally, some modes support restoring to a different email id than that of the user whose mail is being restored. These are primarily useful for monitoring and audit purposes.

Self service for end users

End user’s can restore email for themselves. The only difference is that they don’t have the option of selecting a user. They can only choose from their own email ids, the time period and the restore mode.

Here’s hoping you never lose your email. But if you do, relax and let MailVault help get you up and running. Easily and speedily!