The answer is: "It depends." It depends on what kind of email
system that you're putting in place, and how you intend to move
data from the email server to the
email archiving. For example, suppose an
employee has email traffic on a daily basis. A basic email
archiving system would track email based on when it arrived in
the email system. A policy might then dictate that the email be
archived off the email server after 60 days. That's batch-type
processing and does not require a substantial amount of
bandwidth.
@27541 However, if you're "journaling" emails -- capturing and
archiving copies of email the moment each message arrives at the
email server -- then yes, you're going to utilize much more
bandwidth because data is being moved across the network almost
continuously. Usually, users will choose this approach for
regulatory or litigation purposes.
Predicting the impact of bandwidth on email archiving can be
challenging. It requires substantial performance data collection
and evaluation in order to understand archiving bandwidth needs.
For example, an IT or email manager needs to look at the number of
mailboxes per email server, the traffic per employee or mailbox in
terms of message frequency and size over time to estimate bandwidth
needs. Then, compare bandwidth estimates against the current
bandwidth baseline to help decide whether to journal or batch the
archive process (and if network upgrades are needed).
Listen to the Email
archiving FAQ audiocast here.
Go back to the beginning of the
Email Archiving FAQ Guide.