|
Coupled with our quota policies, we also have an archiving
policy for Faculty & Staff to help manage users’ data and provide a consistent
and stable email platform. The archiving policy dictates that for all
staff and faculty all email older than 1 year is removed from your
current mail file on the primary mail server and placed into an archive mail
file located on the Lotus archive server.
This policy has been reviewed and
approved by the Dean's Office and the Executive Committee.
Why archive?
Since storage costs are so low, why can't I let my mail file just keep
growing in size?
Yes storage costs are low so providing additional
storage space is not the reason for why we have an archiving policy. Indeed
the archive is happening on the server. This means that any
data that is archived from your current mail file residing on a primary email
server is moved to your archive mail file which resides on an archive email
server. So your total disk space usage for email storage does not change.
(Note that we are leaving out the matter of the cost of backing up this data)
Archiving is performed for different reasons. The first is
performance, not just for you but for all
users. Mail files are in active use all the time so the mail server is steadily
processing tasks (it is never idle). Archive files are used much less and
therefore can handle larger files with more data. The more emails (and
large emails) in a mailbox, the longer it takes the server to process them. The
server is continually managing mail files even if you're not using them,
updating views, rebuilding indexes, compacting them, archiving messages and so
on. The responsiveness of your mail file is directly related to how many
emails are in your mail file and how many are in the current view. For
example, someone who has only a thousand emails in their Inbox will have a
quicker and more responsive experience than someone who has 40,000 emails in
their Inbox. For those who access their email in ways other than Lotus Notes,
large numbers of emails can cause the retrieval and setup of those mail clients
to crawl as the server tries to process tens of thousands of emails and convert
them at once.
However the performance is not just related to you. If the
server is spending a disproportionate amount of time working on your mail file,
then that leaves fewer resources for the other users on the server, who also
have a right to expect reasonable levels of performance. Although we have
had an archive policy for quite some time, it is only now that it is being
applied strictly. Just prior to this archive initiative, a mere 5% of our
users were consuming 50% of the resources of our email servers. As the
server-side archiving is applied consistently across our user base the ratio
becomes much more reasonable and the performance for all rises.
And let's not forget, there are quotas in place to help
encourage people to manage their mail files more responsibly. By archiving
older email we are doing our part to be pro-active while previously people had
to keep deleting important messages to ensure they stayed in quota. Now you can
archive those emails so you have them for reference at a later date. (But please
do keep deleting unnecessary emails…)
Are there any other reasons to archive?
Yes! Data
corruption, it can and does happen. The email servers do
a pretty good job of maintaining the mail files and keeping them in good shape.
However the larger the mail file with the larger number of messages, the more
vulnerable the mail file is to corrupt. Although we at Smith IT will
attempt to repair your mail file as quickly as possible, there is the
possibility of data loss. Regular maintenance is run on the mailboxes
throughout the week to help combat this, but overly large mailboxes are still
prone to it. While you as an individual user might be willing to risk some
data loss by not archiving, we cannot allow this as we do not want corruption in
one mailbox to spread or cause instability to server tasks and possibly cause
the server to crash and be offline to all users. Although theoretically
there are very large limits on the size of a mail file, practically we find that
at 60,000+ messages in a view (folder) that issues can start to occur and at
120,000+ messages replication can begin to fail. This would mean that
replicas of your mail file on different servers would get out of sync and if the
one that is incorrect is being backed up in the event of a DR or data loss
situations, we would not be able to fully retrieve your mailbox.
Why is my mail file so large and what can I do to help manage it?
Unfortunately mail file sizes seem to grow more quickly
each year. Initially this used to be due to the increasing size of
attachments. A few years ago an email would have one or two document
attachments and be about 50kb in size. Now people send large PDF files,
multimedia files etc and can be many Mb in size.
This requires users to manage their mail files more
proactively with some simple tasks such as:
l
When replying to emails, remove attachments. Both you and the
recipient already have the attachment in the original email so why store another
copy in your Sent folder?
l
Deleting emails that you don’t need. This could even be as simple
as someone sending you a 'funny video' email. Once you've seen the video, you
can delete the email. Do you really need to keep it? What are the chances that
you'll ever watch it again?
l
Delete or 'detach & link' attachments on your emails (more on this
below).
Your email is exactly that – email! It is not
a document storage system. Email's primary function is to allow you to
communicate with other people, but it is not, and was not, designed as a place
to store documents. If there are documents you need to keep, email is not
the answer. You can use the 'Detach & Link' option (under Extras > Detach
& Link in your Inbox) that will save the files on an email anywhere you
want and then put a link to them in the email. This way if you have
important documents or research that you need to keep, you can place them in
your My Documents folder or on your K: drive for example. Storing them in
your mail file is not the best solution.
How can I access my archive?
And you can access your archive from within Notes and on the web
too! Under your Inbox is
 Tools, expand that as shown on the right and you'll see
the Archive link. Clicking on this opens your Archive file (which also puts an
icon on your Workspace).
You can also access your Archive on the web as you do your
email. You use
http://mail.rhsmith.umd.edu to access your 'regular mail' and you use
http://archive.rhsmith.umd.edu to access your 'archived mail'.
October, 2007 update: We are in the process of updating everyone's
mail template so that shortly you will have a link under Tools in iNotes that
goes directly to your archive as well, making it even easier to find.
So what does archiving do and what happens to my messages?
Archiving is where email messages that meet a certain
criteria are moved from your current mail file to the archive mail file located
on another mail server. Our policy is that all email older than or which has not
been modified for more than 1-2 years is archived. The folder structure of your
archive will remain the same as it was in your regular mail, so email will be
easy to find. e.g. If the server archives 10 messages from a folder called
"Test" in your regular mail file, when you open your archive you would find
those 10 messages in a folder called "Test" there too.
We will run a process to automatically archive all mail
that meets this criteria at least once per week. The process may run more
frequently. Currently
the schedule is three times a week. During the week the archiving process
does not automatically compact your mail file unless a significant amount of
email is archived, however the weekend archiving process will also compact your
mail file. This should not concern you unless you are near your quota.
Compaction will help with keep your mail file under quota. If you are
getting quota warnings during the week, and need your mailfile compacted before
the weekend, please call the helpdesk at 301-405-2269 and they will compact it
for you.
Can I archive important messages myself before the one-year old archiving
happens?
Absolutely! If you have emails that you have finished working with but still
need to keep as they have important information you can archive them yourself
whenever you wish. All you need to do is drag and drop them onto the archive
link (or click Actions > Archive > Archive Selected Documents). You can see a
short video (35 sec) demonstrating the drag and drop method at
http://bmgt5-notes.rhsmith.umd.edu/video/archivingmanually.wmv
Anything else that can help me work with my archive?
Yes. We are actively working through the mail files and
archives and indexing them to make searching much easier. Instead of sorting
emails by name or date etc, you will be able to search by word(s)
We are also currently investigating and plan to roll out in
the next few months a technology that would allow you to be able to search your
archive and mail file at the same time. The search results would
contain links to documents in both files.
I use an email client other than Notes, how does archiving impact me?
Archiving removes the messages from your Inbox, so the type
of mail client you are using will affect how it shows up in your client.
If you are accessing your email using POP, then you should
be downloading the emails to your chosen email client and removing them from the
server. This would keep 'emptying' your Notes server-side mailbox. If you are
not removing the messages from the server then a) you aren't managing your mail
file on the server as messages will keep accumulating and b) you should see no
impact on your mail client unless you set up a new POP client at which time
emails older than one year would no longer be available in your client for
re-download.
If you are using IMAP then this impacts you in a larger
way. IMAP 'mirrors' your mail folders on the server with those on your client
(similar to a Notes replica). If you delete a message from a folder on your IMAP
client, it is deleted from the folder in Notes and vice versa. To an IMAP client
when an email is archived it is the equivalent of the email being 'deleted' as
it no longer appears in your server-side folder. The workaround for this is to
regularly export your IMAP folders in your mail client to a separate data store.
(e.g. in Outlook create a new PST file and export your IMAP folders from time to
time (with the “replace duplicate items” option turned on).
Note that whether you use IMAP, POP or Notes, you can still
access the archive through either the web or through the Notes client. If you
don't have a Notes client on your computer you can login through the eSmith
Portal (http://portal.rhsmith.umd.edu)
and either run the Citrix Notes client or download a copy of Notes and install
on your computer (Mac or PC) from the downloads folder. Instructions for
installing Notes are also in the downloads folder. Instructions for using the
Portal can be found on our eSmith Portal page at
http://www.rhsmith.umd.edu/portal/
|
