0

I'm currently using a Barracuda Networks Message Archiver 350 appliance for email archiving (since 2008). I've been updating the Barracuda firmware as soon as a new version is released.

The Barracuda appliance ran out of space this year and I started using external storage. Some of the archive is stored on the appliance and another part of it is stored on a network shared drive.

Recently, after the latest firmware version was installed, the Barracuda appliance started showing 100% CPU usage and 100% memory usage.

I got on the phone with Barracuda support and they remoted into the Barracuda appliance and rebuilt the archive.

The problem was that I had a 15 day junk email retention policy and every day when junk emails emails older than 15 days would be deleted, the whole archive would get re-indexed. This re-indexing would cause the 100% CPU usage and 100% memory usage.

Barracuda support just changed the junk email retention policy so that junk emails are stored but not deleted after 15 days (so the deletion event does not cause a complete re-index process)

Now, junk emails are just continually stored on the shared drive and never get deleted which is not really a good solution.

This hack is working, but Barracuda support is stating that the hardware is too old and that I should upgrade to the latest and greatest appliance (which costs approximately $7,000) Apparently the appliance I have is too slow (CPU), it does not have enough memory and storage. I can not upgrade the appliance memory or storage as doing so would void the support agreement.

I don't want to buy the latest and greatest Barracuda appliance now. Moreover, in 5 years, when the latest and greatest Barracuda appliance is obsolete, I don't want to buy the latest and greatest Barracuda appliance. If I buy a new appliance now, in 2012, then I'd have to buy the latest and greatest Barracuda appliance of 2017 after the 2012 hardware no longer "cuts it".

I don't want to use Exchange 2010 pst personal archiving because to search a pst archive it needs to be moved/copied across the network.

Is there an email archiving solution that I can use on a commodity server (Linux or Windows) that will archive and index all incoming and outgoing emails (a 500 GB archive)?

I'm open to proprietary and OSS solutions.

2 Answers2

1

Why not just stick a linux server in-line with an MTA of your choice? It would be trivially easy to have sendmail, postfix, etc. archive locally then relay to the Exchange server?

EEAA
  • 109,363
  • 18
  • 175
  • 245
  • Had not thought of a man-in-the-middle Linux relay. That's a excellent idea! –  Feb 27 '12 at 21:48
  • But you still need the GUI and a search interface. That's where a proper journaling solution comes in. – ewwhite Feb 27 '12 at 21:56
  • @ewwhite **Need** a GUI? SACRILEGE! Real men use `grep`. ;) – EEAA Feb 27 '12 at 22:04
  • @ErikA A nice GUI would get my manager to buy in. Also, grep is a sequential-search tool. It's like having to do a full-file scan instead of using b-tree indexes. I like build-once, self-balancing indexes. You get fast range scans and searches with indexes. –  Feb 27 '12 at 22:11
  • @DragosToader - of course. I understand the convenience and usability factor of a well-engineered solution. My comment was (mostly) in jest. Though to be honest, you didn't list a GUI as a requirement in your question. – EEAA Feb 27 '12 at 22:12
  • @ErikA - Psssh. GREP. Typically, we journal mail for HR/legal/compliance/regulatory reasons. It's nice to be able to allow auditors or other staff craft complex queries in something like MailArchiva and get at the data they need quickly. – ewwhite Feb 27 '12 at 23:24
0

I STRONGLY recommend MailArchiva Enterprise as an Exchange journaling solution. It's great for other mail servers as well. For Exchange, it pulls via IMAP to a dedicated journal user. The process for setup is easy and well-documented.

The main features mail deduplication/compression, search engine quality indexing/retrieval, encryption and portability. This needs to run on its own server, but that's no different than having a separate Barracuda device. You have control over the hardware and solution at this point. MailArchiva is Java-based and runs in Windows or Linux. I run it on Linux and have made it through several SEC audits and countless message retrieval sessions.

There's a free version, but the commercial version has a much better interface and may have been ~$3k for 100 users.

The lesson here is also that Barracuda's practices and hardware are rough...

ewwhite
  • 197,159
  • 92
  • 443
  • 809