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Support Center » Knowledgebase » How To Evaluate MPP Email Archive
 How To Evaluate MPP Email Archive
Solution DEPRECATED SEE THIS LINK
This is a brief guide that explains the components and configuration steps of an MPP email archive solution.

There are 4 components of an MPP email archive architecture:

Archive Agents - Agents send email into the archive system.  Examples are MS Exchange 07 or 03,  SMTP journal reports, bcc email, IMAP servers, email files,  Postfix, Scalix, CommuniGate Pro, Sendmail, Exim, etc.   Our archive system supports these agents and more.   MPP can be an archive agent on a supported MTA such as Postfix, but this is not a requirement in our architecture.

Email Processor - MPP is the email processor in our architecture.   It processes email before it is archived.  It does things like scan for content, strip attachments, de-dupe attachments, adds digital signatures, scans for spam and more. 

Email Archive Access Server  - MPP Manager provides web access to the email archives and manages permissions, purge policies, importing, Active Directory integration and more.   MPP Manager has an embedded web server or it can run under Apache. 

Message Store - We recommend to have some type of network attached storage device to store your email archives. 

Each component has configuration tasks involved, here are the basic steps.
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1) Install the Message Processor and Access Server.   There are 2 options here, use our virtual appliance which is pre-configured as a Message Processor to accept journal reports from many sources, has full text search indexing and has optimized configurations for email archive.   This option will save time and is recommended.  Remember that the Message Store should be housed on a NAS device so the virtual appliance is just processing email and providing web access, not storing the email.   Here is a guide to setting up the MPP Email Archive virtual appliance.

If you are not interested in the VMWare virtual appliance you can recreate the Message Processor and Access Server components by installing MPP, MPP Manager, configuring a MySQL database and installing the full-text search indexer.   Installing MPP and MPP Manager is simple and there are instructions in the download email or in this knowledge base article.   The MySQL database can be configured in the MPP GUI (http://yourhost:20001 ) in the system->MySQL section.  When configuring the Message Store we recommend to store email in the 'metadata' format.  In this format information (metadata) about the email is stored in a database while the email messages are stored on the file system (typically an NFS mounted directory from your NAS drive).   Here is an important guide about setting up MySQL for email archiving .  After setting up MPP, MPP Manager and the database you need to setup full text search indexing.  Here is a guide to set up full text search of email archives.   Mailspect support will guide you in this process or do it for you if this is the route you choose.

2)  Configure the Archive Agent.  Email must be sent to the Message Processor, here are some guides to configuring various agents.  It is important to reiterate that the virtual appliance is pre-configured to accept journaled email from MS Exchange 03 and 07.

MPP as Journal Agent
MPP can be installed on a supported MTA (Postfix, CommuniGate Pro, Sendmail, Qmail, Exim, Sun Java Systems Messaging Server) to send email to a central MPP system that serves as the 'Message Processor'.  In this architecture the Archive Agent will be configured to archive email using the 'Mailstore' protocol to the MPP that serves as the Message Processor.  The MPP Mailstore protocol uses ESMTP to transmit email for archive and has multiple levels of queuing to guard against many types of failures.

To configure MPP as an email archive agent install MPP on your MTA using our standard installation instructions.  It is not necessary to configure any scanners for this application, simply enable email archive in the Services->Email Archive section and use the 'mailstore' protocol to point messages to your central MPP Message Processor.

MS Exchange 2003

MS Exchange 2007

IMAP import to journal account
With this archive method IMAP email is imported with MPP Manager and sent to the Message Processor for archiving in a journal report.  The journal report is the same format as MS Exchange 07 uses hence you must configure the Message Processor (MPP) to process Exchange 07 journal reports. This is done in the Services->Archive section of MPP Manager.

Importing Email Files
MPP can import eml, mbox and maildir files from MPP Manager (http://yourhost:20000) in the Archive->Import section. MPP can import over 20 different email formats.

Zarafa
To archive Zarafa email install MPP on the server and configure for Postfix or Qmail depending on your site.  MPP will archive email using the  mailstore protocol to our VM or an instance of MPP running as Message Processor.

Scalix  
Send messages to the MPP  Message Proessor using the Archiver feature of Scalix.














Article Details
Article ID: 52
Created On: 07 May 2009 01:21 AM

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