Email Archive Solution

Question

I need recommendation for Email archive solution. We have setup hosting and email server on one of government enterprise where they need to store all incoming/outgoing emails for compliance and auditing purpose.

Actually they were looking for email client/application which restrict user for deleting of any email but we didn’t find any off the shelf application in market which supports these kind of features.

Now they want to retain all the emails send/receive from server for specific time in an organized way (according to mailbox, date/time) so they can retrieve it easily.

We are using MailEnable Enterprise Premium Edition on server. Please post your recommendation and suggest some solution.

Thank You

Answer 1

Why not pass your SMTP traffic through a Linux server and use and SMTP server such as Exim configured with a shadow transport and router:

Router:

T_SHADOW_ALL:
    debug_print = "R: shadow delivery"
    driver = accept
    transport = SHADOW_DELIVERY # see below
    unseen                     # don't stop at this router

Transport:

SHADOW_DELIVERY:
    debug_print = "T: shadow_delivery"
    driver = appendfile
    group = mailusers
    user = mailusers
    mode = 0660
    envelope_to_add = true
    return_path_add = true
    file = SHADOWDIR${length_10:$tod_log}/${message_id}
    use_lockfile = false

Brilliant! You will get a directory full of mail messages in directories such as 2011-04-28, each with their own unique message id. Naturally its pretty easy to log all the headers of the messages passing through your server in an SQL database too.

Alternatively consider using Exchange 2010 and its archiving and retention tools.

Answer 2

Barracuda Networks has a Mail Archiver 1U rack-mounted appliance. It's pretty powerful if I recall the demo correctly and has won some awards.