General
What does Estorian mean?
An Estorian was a person in medieval times that went from town to town, telling of the events and stories from the previous towns they had visited. In essence, they told of the current events or recent history of the surrounding towns and villages becoming the original social networking involving more than just the immediate surroundings of individuals.
What email systems are supported?
Currently, Microsoft Exchange is supported under the LookingGlass umbrella. Plans are to add additional email systems before the end of calendar 2008.
Is there any hardware to install?
The LookingGlass product is a software only solution and does not come with an appliance that requires installation. The server needed to run the application is clearly defined for the end user so they may acquire whatever server equipment they desire that stays within their company’s directive on vendor usage.
Performance is usually a key issue with products such as these. What kind of hardware is needed to allow LG to operate at peak efficiency?
Search performance is almost entirely dependent on the hardware the LookingGlass software is installed upon. The higher processor speeds and memory capacity given, the better the performance during searches. Because it runs in real time mode, it is designed to balance out the load throughout the day without going through heavy “wake up and scan” intervals. Our installation guides detail the proper level of hardware required given the load per hour of e-mails that traverse the Exchange environment.
Do you have the ability to establish policies?
With LookingGlass, word list may be established that constitute a subject matter and users can be attached to that word list as a "watch group". When any word or phrase that matches the list is sent via an email, the watch group is immediately notified of the infraction. For example, a list named "Sexual Harassment" is created which has all the words or phrases which the company deems inappropriate words to be used in the work place. When any of these are used in an email, the word or phrase is highlighted in a notification email that is sent to the watch group IDs.
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Architecture
Does your solution use Journaling or Logging?
The LookingGlass is a real time, "in flight" capture product for email and does not use Journaling or Logging, Clustering or Mirroring to accomplish its task. There is virtually no overhead incurred on the Exchange server as a result of installing and using LookingGlass.
What about Single Instance Store (SIS) and Deduplication?
The archiving repository for LookingGlass is an SIS and does deduplication on the fly as items are archived. LookingGlass employes a unique fingerprinting technology that examines all aspects of an email including its metadata to determine if any new artifacts have been added to the email.
What Database Is Used For the Archive?
The database is Microsoft SQL and is only used for the Index. The actual archive repository is kept in a non-proprietary foldering system which gives the customer maximum flexibility in its placement. It can be stored on WORM based technology so as to guarantee its authenticity until deletion but the technology decision is left to the end user. Translated: You are not locked into a vendor strategy by nature of creating the archiving repository. Additionally, should anything corrupt the index, it can be rebuilt using the archive repository making recovery processing very simple, fast and efficient.
What type of interface does LookingGlass have?
The interface is a native interface and installs in under 2 minutes.
Is there any software that goes on my Exchange Server?
No, the software can reside off-board from the Exchange Server and is designed that it can run just about anywhere. The recommended configuration would involve establishing a Windows Server where the LookingGlass software and indexing database can be installed. The windows client can be installed on virtually any Windows version (2000 or above).
Do I have to restore old EDB tapes to Exchange in order to have them indexed and archived?
No, the LookingGlass product allows EDB files for Exchange 5.5 to be read directly without the need to go through time consuming and troublesome restores to the Exchange DB. This feature saves administrators large amounts of time in getting all of their email brought within the Indexing engine. Additionally, PST files may be directly read into the Index/Archive as well. We are currently working on Eschange 2003 and 2007 for EDB file inclusion.
Are attachments indexed?
Yes, over 600 different attachment types are indexed along with the email they were attached to. Searches may be performed that start with the attachment that then locate all emails which contained the attachment... a first in the industry.
A particular note of a confidential nature got thru the spam filters - how would the LG product help?
We are not a spam or virus checker. We can however tell where every virus or spam e-mail went and on whose desktop the virus had been distributed.
We traditionally have very tight security and are concerned about granting Domain Admin privilege and giving the LG mail account “Receive As” authority. Why do I need this level of authority granted?
In order to be able to see all email and attachments as an administrator would see, the product needs the same level of security authorization.
The LG ID needs to have “Receive As” authority in order to avoid turning Journaling and Logging on. They also require a similar level of authority while at the same time chew up to 15% to 45% of the Exchange server resources. Ultimately, both approaches use the same RPC method to communicate so LG simply does not unnecessarily chew up Exchange resources to accomplish the task.
How can I best monitor LG to ensure it is catching everything? What happens if the system is unknowingly offline for 4 hours and end users receive and delete messages – will they be archived?
If the LG Server goes down the interceptor continues to capture e-mail in real-time mode. After the LG server comes up LG recognizes that it has messages to process and catches up. This is a great feature of LookingGlass and is easy to test. Simply stop the scanner process. All emails will be queued waiting for the scanner to be restarted at which point, the data will be indexed and archived.
What is the best method to replicate data between multiple sites?
We do not replicate data between cites as this is not our product focus. Technologies, such as clustering, are transparent to LG.
Does LookingGlass use a relational database or flat file indexing. Optimized file-based indexes seem to perform faster.
Flat file indexing is very fast when you have no need to perform relational type queries. Most e-discovery searches are very relational in nature and by definition rule out what would become a complex, slow and arduous search using flat file indexing. Flat file indexing has come a long way in recent years but is not yet ready for enterprise class searching of the nature required for e-discovery. Flat file indexing gives fewer options including the ability to tie emails and attachment together to show the trail and activity of conversations. In other words, LG takes a slight hit on the front end to provide greater flexibility on the back end.
Is an archival agent required on Exchange Server?
No, LG does not require any agent or code to be placed on the e-mail Server
Can the archival job be broken into smaller jobs? (This is important when you have thousands of mailboxes to manage.)
The scanner can be run at anytime and can be stopped anytime automatically. This feature is controlled in the options tab of the LG options tab called schedule. There you have options of when to start and stop scanners. Options are also available to control how many simultaneous threads are available for scanning and indexing of messages and attachments.
Does the archival job replace message and/or attachments with stubs?
No, Estorian believes that stubbing is not an effective means of managing Exchange and, in fact, sets the customer up for further problems down the road with Exchange. Once archived and indexed through LG, the e-mail is now safely tucked away and the most effective manner for Exchange to deal with this is to remove the emails through shorter time spans of retention on the Exchange Database. The LG client may then be used for a much more efficient and accurate search for e-mail retrieval.
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Archives
What policies and settings control archive messages (and attachments)? Can archiving be done based on age ?
The LG Server ‘Cut off’ option indicates how far back you would like to index and how long to keep an e-mail and/or attachment in the database.
Can LG archive and index items over a WAN?
We have supported many remote locations with LookingGlass including China over a WAN. WAN implementations are dependent on having the WAN settings properly tuned for best performance.
User interfaces for this type of data can be quite complicated and most of my staff are not IT savvy. How does LookingGlass compare in ease of use.
Gartner, ESG, Forrestor, The 451 Group, Taneja Group, along with countless demos to customers and partners have confirmed that the interface is easy to use and the best they have seen. The user interface has been complimented many times over as simple and easy to use. It is purposed towards the end user who is not sophisticated when it comes to IT yet needs questions answered accurately and quickly.
How does LG provide 100% archival.
“ The LookingGlass Scanner performs background tasks, and usually runs at night when message activity is low. The time schedule for the scan processes is set on the Options form of the Server, and during those time periods, the Server begins assigning mailboxes to one or more Scanner processes. More than one instance of the Scanner is usually running, and each instance is assigned a list of mailboxes to scan. The Scanner opens a mailbox and matches the messages in it with the messages in the LookingGlass Database. If it finds a message that is in the Exchange mailbox but not in the LookingGlass Database (which is rare, since the Interceptor usually captured the message as it arrived), it writes the message to the Scanned Message Queue. When the Server detects messages in the Queue, it assigns them to an available Indexer for further processing. “
If the Interceptor misses an email (which can happen rarely as per documentation) those emails will not be archived until the scan is run. There can be a interval from the time email arrived and LG scans it. What happens if the email is deleted permanently from Exchange?
The LookingGlass Interceptor would detect that a deletion process took place and archive the message at that time. It would be a very rare occurrence that the message would be missed when it was originally sent or received. However, the periodic scan and the fact that the real time event of deletion is monitored would indicate that the email will not get by the LookingGlass system without indexing and archiving.
Does LG check for message integrity ?. Will LG provide encryption?
LG fingerprints every message and attachment which verifies the integrity of the email. LG also handles messages and files that are encrypted. They are stored in their original encrypted format but are opened for the process of indexing.
How does LG remove archived emails from exchange server based on age to save storage space
This is not an LG process but rather a MS Exchange process.
How do users access the migrated messages (and attachments)?
Each user that has the LG client installed has access to the LG Database. Based on standard default settings they can only review and retrieve their own e-mails and attachments. The default settings can be modified to view others e-mail and attachments through the LG Administrator.
Can users view the archived message (and attachment) via Microsoft Outlook without restoring to Exchange Server?
Yes, so long as the LG Client is enabled for their respective e-mail account(s).
Can archived messages (and attachments) be converted back to their original form?
Yes, Messages and attachments are stored in their native format within the Archive. In order for a user to view these messages and attachments the user must have a ‘viewer’ to view the documents in their native format. For example, if there is a VISIO document that is being retrieved the user must be able to open that attachment in Visio or have a viewer installed on the client’s machine that allows Visio to be opened in its native format.
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PST Files
Can users manually archive .PST data into the archive?
Yes, User’s have the ability to create ‘Virtual’ archives for their individual PST files or can integrate their PST files into the existing LG Archive. They can be searched individually by each ‘Virtual’ server or can be searched in combination with the master Archive.
Can PST’s be loaded over the network?
All LG needs is a valid path to the PST file.
After migration, how are the .PST files deleted or removed?
This is completely controlled by the end user. If the user chooses to delete their individual PST files that is fine. They cannot however delete any message or attachment that has been accepted into the archive.
Can administrators schedule .PST archival using an automated process (PST Crawler)?
Yes: The Administrator can schedule as many scanners of PST files all at once or upon a schedule. The only requirement is the LG have a path to the location of the PST files and has shared access to those files.
Are any "stub" files placed in Exchange Server for access to the .PST archive data?
No. It is LookingGlass’ mission to remove as much burden as possible on the Exchange Server itself. “Stubbing an Exchange Server environment causes further, latent problems with Exchange and is not recommended by Estorian.
How do users access the .PST archive data?
Through the Client Interface that is installed on the user’s desktop. This feature will change in future releases via an Outlook Add-In.
Can archived .PST data be converted back to its original form?
Yes, a simple import will recover all or selected PST messages and/or attachments back in their native form for the requesting user.
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User Interface
What are the options/interfaces available for end users to retrieve/view/respond to archived email. (can user do this from Outlook itself)
LG has its own standalone interface that allows the user to retrieve/view/respond to all archived email without involvement of IT.
What are the options/interfaces available for Administrators to retrieve emails.
Administrators may be granted permissions to see all mailboxes and emails but this is not by default. Only the original installer/administrator of the product may grant further levels of access to other users which may include full administrative rights within LG.
How can we delegate permission to Exchange administrators where they can restore email or mailbox for any user but should not be able to read/modify any emails.
See answer immediately above. Any mailbox which can be viewed is fully readable. However, the archived emails cannot be modified within the LG system by any user.
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Journaling
If Exchange Journaling is not used, how is 100% of e-mail data captured for compliance?
The LG Interceptor works cooperatively with Exchange and the LG e-mail account established to capture all e-mail activity as it occurs.
If Journaling is required or used, what is the performance impact on Exchange Server?
Journaling is not required to be used with LG. This is a distinguishing feature of LookingGlass. All messages and attachments are ‘copied through this interface and has no effect of negative performance on the Exchange Server.
Is an agent required on the Exchange Server?
No. There is no software required on the Exchange server other than having a single e-mail account with ‘Receive As’ authority.
How often is the journal mailbox read?
The Journal and/or Log files are not required to implement the LG solution and are not read.
Is the journal mailbox emptied after it is read?
LG does not require the Exchange Journal to be activated. If the Journal is activated by the Exchange Administrator then the Journal and Log files are the responsibility of the Exchange Administrator. Again, LG does not require Journaling or Logging to be turned on.
Does the journal mailbox data include message folders? Contacts? Calendar?
LG does not currently archive the contacts and Calendar entries.
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We Have A Requirement.......
We have a requirement for 100% email archival for legal purpose for e.g. 7 years
Yes, this is accomplished with LookingGlass. In fact, you can establish a removal policy in LookingGlass that removes emails older than 7 years automatically
We have a requirement that archived e-mails should be accepted as evidence in the court of law ( i.e. Archival system should preserve time, header, attachment, body, etc. as it is and prevent or detect any unauthorized modification, corruption)
Yes, we retain all emails in their original form, unaltered by the end users who perform the search and retrieval of these emails.
We have a requirement to remove e-mails older than 3 months from Exchange mail-store for Storage optimization –For benefitting from single instance storage and moving older less frequently used email to cheaper storage medium.
Easily accomplished by simply using the Exchange removal process and setting it to remove items after 3 months time. Retrieving anything older than 3 months is done from the LookingGlass product.
We have a requirement that the user must be able to retrieve single, multiple emails or entire mailbox and forward, reply to those archived emails on his own.
Yes, easily done with LookingGlass.
We have a requirement that Exchange Administrators should be able to restore mailbox /mails from archive
Yes, easily done with LookingGlass.
We have a requirement that all Exchange Administrators should not have access to read individual email of users.
LookingGlass allows the product administrator to determine who else can see mailboxes. The default for a new user is to see only their own mailbox. The LookingGlass administrator can grant them expanded access to see a few other mailboxes or to see all mailboxes.
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