Morgan Sindall improves archiving

New system improves security and speed-of-access

Morgan Sindall's Fit Out division, which refurbishes commercial and retail properties, has implemented an email archiving system to imrove reliability and protect data.

The division has used Archive Manager from Quest Software to replace six Exchange servers and 750 mailboxes across hundreds of locations. The division was struggling with a lack of disk space on its central Exchange servers.

Morgan Sindall's Fit Out division's email is completely protected should if company laptops are lost or stolen, through Archive Manager's central storage.

'Having 400GB of archived email held as PST files on our users' hard drives was asking for trouble,' said Steve Buchanan, IT manager at Morgan Sindall's Fit Out division.

'This is now held centrally in one place where it cannot be lost or stolen. Previously it would have taken is up to two days to restore email, now it takes two seconds. Our email is archived and is therefore protected, which means that our disaster recovery time is reduced purely to restoring the server,' said Buchanan.

With servers totaling around 230 GB and less than 8GB of space typically available, Fit Out was constantly juggling and spare capacity, and imposed strict size limitations on the users' mailboxes.

Buchanan says the new system delivers a number of benefits.

'We've imported into Archive Manager over 800GB of email files and archived mail held in PST files on our users' hard drives. Archive Manager has reduced this to 380 GB, so we no longer have any space issues. We now have a totally reliable mechanism to prove that an e-mail has been sent or received and a true record of its content. This can prove invaluable in clarifying our position when required,' he said.

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