Charles Taite thread on Stubbing in GroupWise - Content from the NGWList

Category: Read, Charles Taite, Retain
By: Richard Bliss

The following comments are from a stubbing discussion on the NGWList, a Novell GroupWise user email listserv. Charles goes into details about the issues of stubbing.

It's true that the current conventional wisdom around stubbing in the Exchange world is shifting towards only stubbing attachments (even Microsoft is recommending it). This is not only critical from a performance point of view, it also makes a lot sense since it's really the attachment that consumes the space. 

BTW... The initial stubbing API Novell is delivering in GroupWise 8 does not support stubbing of only attachments. It's the whole message or nothing. This could change with SP1, but the community will have to speak up since as far as I know, Novell has no plans to support stubbing of only attachments. 

Assuming it were possible with GroupWise, as it is with Exchange, this change of technique also necessitates a change in the purpose of stubbing. Stubbing becomes more of a niche solution for managing e-mail storage, and not an archiving compliance solution. 

One of the theoretically nice benefits of full stubbing is that you can archive the entire message (for compliance), but allow end users to access those archived messages via a stub in their e-mail client. This is great, because end users don't have to be trained to access archived messages through a different interface like a Web UI or a separate Windows client. So with no client-side software or plugins and a seamless integration with the e-mail client, you can comply with retention laws without having to deploy software to the client or train your end users. In theory, this is the ideal way of doing archiving.

Of course, if you are only stubbing (archiving) the attachment and not the message, then you really aren't talking about compliance/retention anymore and are now talking about a solution to move the storage burden off of the e-mail server. Of course, archiving software like GWAVA's Retain for GroupWise will be able to archive all e-mail (leaving the original untouched in GroupWise) and then also, stub attachments older then X days (if Novell expands the stubbing API), so you can comply AND remove attachments from GroupWise, but as you can see, stubbing becomes and extra function sitting on top a full archiving solution rather then a solution in and of itself. 

Charles Taite

ct@gwava.com
 

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>>> "Simon Shilton" <Simon.Shilton@acustica.co.uk> 11/12/2008 7:53 AM

>>>

Gert 

thanks for the links
 

I like the comments on the Ferris site, particularly Tom Politowski, see below, who's description of their preferred approach reminds me of the native GW architecture. 

How to improve Outlook/Exchange performance with large datasets, make the message storage more like GroupWise, by adding a third party product

:-) 

Simon 

"I think Bob Spurzem is “on the mark” and also has a “CLEAR

MISS”.
Older “stubbing” technology present in some first generation email archiving solutions are dangerously fragile with respect to loss of data, loss of links, and spoiling the Outlook experience. However, new, second generation solutions like MailMeter avoid the problems mentioned by Bob because they remove only attachments from candidate messages (leaving the message body intact) and replace the attachment with a link to the archived attachment. The attachment is launched dynamically from the archive when the user clicks on the link. The advantages to this approach are: 1) the user’s Outlook experience is not spoiled by having only partial messages; 2) there is no need to retrieve the message from the archive to view it; 3) the attachments removed are the largest part of storage used in a message - giving big storage savings; 4) the attachments are retrieved directly from the archive for the user without going back through the Exchange server; 6) in case of a lost message, the user can get a copy from the archive. So we agree on leaving the Outlook user experience intact - don’t stub messages (just stub attachments). And do it like we do without an
Outlook Add-in!"

>>> On 11 November 2008 at 22:59, in message
, Gert
wrote: 

See also www.ferris.com

http://webcasts.techrepublic.com.com/abstract.aspx?docid=386943

Gert

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On Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 11:25 PM, Gregg A. Hinchman
wrote:

To Bring back the Topic of Stubbing:

From: technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc671168.aspx

Quote:

Eliminates stub files when using third-party archiving solutions Third-party archiving solutions have become popular as corporate compliance requirements and mailbox quota management have gained importance. Many of these archiving solutions offer the ability to leave a small stub file in place of the archived message that can be used by end users to retrieve archived messages from the archival system. Some organizations use the stub file solution as a workaround to offering large mailboxes. One of the goals of stub archiving solutions is to reduce the aggregate mailbox and database size, thereby reducing recovery time objectives (RTOs). On the surface, this appears to be a
good idea. However, stub-based archiving solutions have the following
technical problems:

* Server performance Removing the message bodies and attachments from Exchange reduces the mailbox size, but it does not significantly change the server performance for users accessing Exchange via Outlook in online mode and Outlook Web Access. Item counts are the primary performance driver for the Exchange store, and not aggregate size. For example, server performance with a folder containing 100 KB of full e-mail message items is similar to a folder containing 100 KB of stub files.

* Client complexity Because the use of stub files with a third-party archiving solution requires the deployment and use of Outlook add-ins, a significant amount of time must be spent by administrators to deploy and manage these add-ins. Administrator time is also required to assist end users with technical difficulties using the add-ins. Not deploying stub files removes all of this additional administrative work that must be performed, thereby allowing more time to administrators and end users.

END

So as you can see -we have some 'fun' ahead of us with GW and stubbing.
It will be interesting to see how GW 8 does.
--

Take Care.

Gregg A. Hinchman
Consultant
Gregg@HinchmanConsulting.com ( Gregg@HinchmanConsulting.com )
www.HinchmanConsulting.com
A Novell Consulting Partner
317.329.0288 Office
413.254.2819 eFax

"Courage is doing what is right."

"Do not be bound to any doctrine, theory or ideology, even Buddhist ones. All systems of thought are guiding means, not absolute truth."Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnamese monk.

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