What is our primary use case?
We have deployed Enterprise Vault's latest version on our on-premises servers. We use it to migrate the existing data from another version to the newest version.
What is most valuable?
The features that we really like are SMTP archiving, and classification. The solution performs indexing very well.
In version 12, we can search for a text on the image. This is one of the new features on Enterprise Vault 12. It's great that we can search for text, for the purposes of image archiving.
The integration capabilities are second to none.
The solution has great compatibility with many different types of storage.
What needs improvement?
In version 11, there aren't many features about SMTP archiving or giving it support.
There was one earlier version, Enterprise Vault 10, that was 32-bit indexing. Enterprise Vault from 11 onwards is 64-bit indexing.
The file-level archiving is very important in Enterprise Vault 12 and this doesn't really exist in early versions.
In the future, it would be ideal if it could be integrated with the cloud at high availability. Enterprise Vault is an Active/Passive node. It doesn't provide high availability with Active/Active. In future versions, if Active/Active could be achieved, we could consider it capable of high availability and load balancing as well.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using this for more than 10 years, for different clients within my company.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The stability is great. In terms of server hardware, performance, and the load, it's quite reliable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The scalability depends on a few different factors, such as the data, and it's requirements. We need to figure out if the customer wants the data to be stored for five years or ten years and we need to figure out how much storage will be needed now and into the future. It's possible to scale, however.
We have about 5,000-10,000 users within our organization. They would all need to have their mailboxes archived, for example.
How are customer service and support?
Our organization provides technical support for Enterprise Vault. We have the ability to work on any Enterprise Vault issues from level One to Four. In a worst-case scenario, we may need to go into SQL scripts to gather more information.
How was the initial setup?
We have complex environments, where the clients have the data of more than 100 terabytes. We deployed successfully, and we migrated data successfully. That said, due to the fact that our environment is complex, the initial implementation wasn't necessarily straightforward.
The maintenance requirements depend upon the features of Enterprise Vault. If it is using for end-user mailbox archiving, yes, we may have some issues from the end-users, and if it is only for a general archiving data, the maintenance is less.
What about the implementation team?
I handled the implementation myself, from scratch. I did the designing, development, deployment to the servers, configuration, and migration.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The main cost for the Enterprise Vault is a mailbox cost. For example, we need to know how many mailboxes we need to get archived as there is a charge per mailbox.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We have so many products, including Commvault and other products. That said, we identified Enterprise Vault as the best option for integrating with different products and different features. For example, it's integrated with the other email servers like Microsoft Office 365 and Microsoft Exchange. It's integrated with other backup servers such as NetBackup and MCT Backup. It's integrated with SQL. So we can't find any other product that has this level of integration capabilities and features.
What other advice do I have?
We're Veritas customers. We don't have a special relationship with the company.
The solution has been deployed on on-premise and virtual servers as well, both on physical as well as virtual servers. I've been working with a variety of different deployment models. I've worked with the solution from version 9 all the way through to 12.
I'd advise those considering using the solution to look at their requirements in terms of scaling, data compatibility, and data integration. These all need to be considered before choosing a product.
Overall, I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. If it offered high availability, I would rank it higher.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
*Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
