Migrating data from an old email archive is a complex task, especially if you want to do it correctly. In this blog we discuss the right way to approach migrating legacy email archives.
Several factors influence the complexity of email archive migration, including:
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How much data is in the email archive and how much do you want to migrate?
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What was archived? Just emails, emails and attachments, contacts/notes/tasks/appointments/public folders?
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Could any of the archived email be relevant to current or anticipated litigation?
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Are any of the archived emails subject to regulatory retention requirements?
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Do you want to migrate all of the archived email data to another repository or do you want to take the opportunity to defensibly dispose of data no longer needed?
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Have the archived messages been converted to the EML format?
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How much enterprise bandwidth is available and at what times of the day/night?
These questions need to be addressed before purchasing a solution or contracting with a migration provider.
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Let’s start with the first question: “How much data is in the email archive and how much do you want to migrate?” This question is crucial as it will help you address the other questions by considering what’s in the archive, what should be migrated, and why. It will also give you an idea of the migration duration.
If you’ve decided to migrate data from an old email archive, a best practice is to migrate everything out for analysis. This allows you to determine what content should be kept for business, regulatory compliance, and legal responsibilities, and what can be disposed of.
In the past, some have chosen to migrate specific email boxes and leave the rest in the archive, planning to shut it down later. This is risky because shutting down an archive with data still in it doesn’t absolve you from potential regulatory or legal orders to recover that data. The legally defensible process to follow is to migrate all data out and analyze the content for legal and regulatory requirements. Documenting that content analysis frees you up to defensibly dispose of the remaining content. Be sure to delete all data in the archive after migration to prevent any future recovery demands.
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The best practice is to migrate all content out of the email archive for analysis before moving it elsewhere.
This also answers the question about the migration duration. The industry standard speed for this type of migration is about 100GB per hour. While this might seem fast, migrating an email archive with 10 TB of data would take over four days (100 hours = 4.17 days), which is not optimal.
Archive360 is setting the standard in the industry with the ability to accurately migrate more than 10 to 50 TB per day of archived data, depending on the network connection. For example, Archive360's solution can migrate the same 10 TB of data mentioned above in less than one day, a 76 percent or more improvement in migration time. This can significantly save costs and boost productivity for IT.
If you’d like to see your archived data migrated at top speeds, contact Archive360.
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A Step-by-Step Guide to Archive Migrations
Your on-premise legacy data is ready for migration. But that doesn't mean you must endure the time and expense of installing archive migration software on-premises. This step-by-step guide outlines a cloud-based approach to legacy archive and legacy data migration
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Jim is the Director of Product Marketing at Archive360 and has over 24 years of experience with multinational corporations and technology start-ups in the financial services, pharmaceutical, and business services industries. His expertise includes over 10 years in archiving, data governance, risk, and compliance, making him a seasoned professional in these critical areas.
