E-mail archiving with CAS
I'm considering designing an e-mail archiving infrastructure using CAS. Could you outline some of the benefits of this approach?

    Requires Free Membership to View

    When you register for SearchDataBackup.com, you’ll also receive targeted emails from my team of award-winning editorial writers. Because your job never seems to get any easier, it’s our goal to keep you up-to-date on the latest backup tips, trends and technologies that will help you get the job done.

    Rich Castagna, Editorial Director

    By submitting your registration information to SearchDataBackup.com you agree to receive email communications from TechTarget and TechTarget partners. We encourage you to read our Privacy Policy which contains important disclosures about how we collect and use your registration and other information. If you reside outside of the United States, by submitting this registration information you consent to having your personal data transferred to and processed in the United States. Your use of SearchDataBackup.com is governed by our Terms of Use. You may contact us at webmaster@TechTarget.com.

CAS, or content-addressable storage, is an object-oriented storage model which provides the user the ability to store objects completely separate from the logical location. One of the main benefits of CAS is its ability to store a "single instance" of a given object. This capability reduces the need for disk space.

For example, say an HR department sends out an e-mail to all 1,000 employees announcing the company picnic and attaching a 1 megabyte (MB) jpeg map of the location. Depending on the e-mail system, when this e-mail and attachment is saved by employees, you potentially could have tens to hundreds of copies if this 1 MB e-mail consuming hundreds of MBs of storage. A CAS storage device would ensure only one copy of the e-mail is saved.

Many e-mail archiving products already in the ability to store single instances of messages in their archive. Before purchasing a CAS storage device for e-mail archive storage, you should double check with your vendors to see if they already offer it in their product.

Do you know…

How to compare CAS and Snaplock Volume?

What's on deck for storage?

This was first published in April 2006