Enterprise Vault Statement of Direction SMTP Email Archiving

Enterprise Vault Statement of Direction

SMTP Email Archiving, POP3, IMAP and Enterprise Vault

W hat Is SM TP Em ail? Simple Mail Transport Protocol (SMTP) is an “internet standard” email server to server transport mechanism, described by IETF RFC 2821 (http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2821.txt). Almost all email sent and received on the internet travels between email servers in an SMTP format. SMTP is generally implemented by a server mail transfer agent (MTA) and sends emails and attachments between servers in a simple ASCII text format. These files are usually given a .eml extension as they are progressing through the various queues in an SMTP server MTA. As a result, attachment files are generally encoded in another format called Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME), as ASCII text does not represent binary files well. SMTP is a “push” protocol between servers, and does not allow clients to “pull” (or view) email messages from mailboxes on email servers, however is often used for email clients to submit email to their server when composing and sending messages.

Several vendors offer SMTP server MTA solutions, including: • Sendmail: first widely adopted SMTP MTA on the internet, offered in open-source and proprietary forms • Postfix, QMail and Exim: further widely adopted open-source / free licensed SMTP MTA’s widely used • Microsoft: uses SMTP between Exchange 2000 and 2003 Servers, and the internet • Other: various proprietary email platforms like Netscape, Qualcomm and Novell servers also use SMTP

Microsoft in particular is driving SMTP into Exchange Server as the only transport protocol of choice between Exchange Servers and other application services in the business.

W hat are POP3 and IM AP?

Post Office Protocol (POP3) and Internet Message Access Protocl (IMAP) are further standard protocols that allow email clients to access and “pull” email from mailboxes on various email servers. Nearly all individual internet service provider email accounts are accessed by email clients using either POP3 or IMAP.

Common email clients that use POP3 or IMAP include: • Eudora • Microsoft Outlook Express • Mozilla Thunbderbird

Common POP3 and IMAP servers include: • Open-source: Courier IMAP Server, Cyrus IMAP Server, UW IMAP Server, DoveCot, DBMail and more • Microsoft: Exchange Server 5.0 through 2003 offer both POP3 and IMAP client access • Other: various proprietary offerings like Netscape, Qualcomm, Novell, HP Openmail, Samsung Contact

Many corporate email accounts however, do not use either protocol, instead using Microsoft Outlook with Microsoft Exchange Server, or Lotus Notes with Lotus Domino Server – both use proprietary protocols to access stored messages on their server, and send new messages to their server. This is the heart of the Enterprise Vault customer base today.

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How does Enterprise Vault w ork w ith SM TP today?

Enterprise Vault 6.0 has implemented SMTP Email Archiving, that consists of an SMTP listener that accepts and captures any email messages forwarded to it by the customer’s existing email servers (see above), and an archiving mechanism to then store those messages in an appropriate Archive, in a Vault Store.

Customers can configure the SMTP capture mechanism such that inbound email messages to known email domains (usually internal) can either be stored in a flat journal-style archive, or separated into per-recipient (usually internal recipients) archives. Outbound email messages are normally all stored in flat journal archives.

Enterprise Vault’s File System Archiving mechanism is then used on a regularly scheduled basis (normally several times per day) to archive all email messages waiting in the disk queues created by the capture mechanism. Enterprise Vault 6.0 also understands MIME formatted ASCII text SMTP email messages, so all regular email fields such as addressing, subject, message body etc are indexed as expected.

Because of this: • Email messages archived by this mechanism are searchable by clients with permissions to the archives where these messages are retained • Searches can be conducted by Browser Search, Archive Explorer, Discovery and Compliance Accelerators. • Viewing of archived SMTP email messages is normally to an HTML (or XML) format, or .eml format.

Currently Enterprise Vault 6.0 doesn’t offer any Custom Filter API for File System Archiving, and thus also not for SMTP email messages. Plans to include a Custom Filter API in an EV 6.0 Service Pack are currently in place (see below). Additionally, Enterprise Vault 6.0 does not offer a native SMTP “journaling” facility to customers; the customer’s SMTP email infrastructure must decide what email messages are to be sent to Enterprise Vault’s SMTP listener (and therefore, which email messages are to be archived). The Enterprise Vault SMTP listener and capture mechanism cannot currently sit “in-stream” in a customer’s SMTP infrastructure today.

How does Enterprise Vault w ork w ith POP3 and IM AP today?

Enterprise Vault 6.0 does not offer any mailbox archiving services for email servers running POP3 and/or IMAP protocols. This means that whilst such servers may send and receive email messages via the SMTP transport mechanism, and these may be archived by Enterprise Vault as described above, we do not have any mailbox archiving services for servers such as:

• Netscape iPlanet, HP Openmail, Samsung Contact • Novell Open Enterprise Server • Sendmail + Courier, Sendmail + Cyrus, Postfix + Cyrus, QMail + POP3 etc

POP3 and IMAP clients such as Outlook Express, Mozilla Thundebird and so on can view archived SMTP email messages by using the search mechanisms outlined above, providing the internet browser platform used on the client is Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5 SP2 or above (see Enterprise Vault Certification Tables: http://ftp.support.veritas.com/pub/support/products/Exchange_Mailbox_Archiving_Unit/276547.pdf ).

Copyright © 2004 VERITAS Software Corporation. All Rights Reserved. VERITAS, VERITAS 2 Software, the VERITAS logo, and all other VERITAS product names and slogans are trademarks or registered trademarks of VERITAS Software Corporation in the US and/or other countries. Other product names and/or slogans mentioned herein may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies. Specifications and product offerings subject to change without notice. Printed in USA and the EU.

Other browser platforms such as Mozilla Firefox, Netscape and Opera *may* work if used with the Browser Search, but are unsupported by Enterprise Vault at this time.

POP3 and IMAP email clients can also work with archived Microsoft Exchange mailboxes today, if the customer uses “Universal Shortcuts” – this is a shortcut setting that includes banner and attachment url link information directly to archived items (see figure 1 below). Archived emails will open in a web browser (see above) window.

Figure 1. Exchange mailbox and Enterprise Vault Universal Shortcut viewed with Mozilla Thunderbird POP3 client.

As with access to any Archive in Enterprise Vault, the user must also authenticate in a security context that has permissions to read the Archive (as a minimum). On a Microsoft Windows client, this is normally through “Integrated Authentication”, however on other client platforms this will need to be through user password authentication.

W hat are our future plans around SM TP Em ail Archiving, POP3 and IM AP?

As described above, we have a mechanism that allows customers to configure their existing SMTP infrastructure, or business applications that generate SMTP email messages, to send email messages for retention directly to Enterprise Vault in a native SMTP format. These will be archived and searchable from Enterprise Vault.

Initially we plan to add a Custom Filter API mechanism to File System Archiving (and thus also for SMTP Email Archiving) that will allow third party ISV partners, and customers to write a filter plugin to selectively choose which SMTP email messages to retain in the archive, where, and for how long. This will allow customers to simply forward all SMTP email messages to Enterprise Vault and allow it to make the decisions regarding which email messages to administratively keep for the organization. This addition is currently planned for release in EV 6.0 SP2 (all future release dates and features may be subject to change). Later we also plan to utilize that Custom Filter API to extend Enterprise Vault’s own “Custom Filter Rules” mechanism to SMTP email messages.

Copyright © 2004 VERITAS Software Corporation. All Rights Reserved. VERITAS, VERITAS 3 Software, the VERITAS logo, and all other VERITAS product names and slogans are trademarks or registered trademarks of VERITAS Software Corporation in the US and/or other countries. Other product names and/or slogans mentioned herein may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies. Specifications and product offerings subject to change without notice. Printed in USA and the EU.

In the future, we also plan to offer an in-stream SMTP journaling facility; that can simply be inserted into a customer’s existing SMTP infrastructure to journal a copy of any/all/some email messages passing through that infrastructure. This may take a Windows platform software form factor, an appliance form factor, or a choice of both. This will allow customers to journal SMTP email messages from their environment, without adding copy and bcc rules to their existing infrastructure as is the case today, and will also impact “chain of custody” positively.

In addition, we plan to evaluate how to further extend the reach of Enterprise Vault onto POP3 and IMAP server mailbox platforms. Although no firm plans to do so are in place for Enterprise Vault today, we are currently researching market requirements and accessible mechanisms to offer some form of mailbox management through archiving to such platforms.

W hat feedback w ould w e like from you?

We would like any additional feedback on: • Other integration use cases we should be considering • Other major email platforms with whom we should be integrating

Copyright © 2004 VERITAS Software Corporation. All Rights Reserved. VERITAS, VERITAS 4 Software, the VERITAS logo, and all other VERITAS product names and slogans are trademarks or registered trademarks of VERITAS Software Corporation in the US and/or other countries. Other product names and/or slogans mentioned herein may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies. Specifications and product offerings subject to change without notice. Printed in USA and the EU.