We are being asked more and more about the Kopano Archiver and its functions, because people are obviously looking for email archiving. Therefore, we would like to evaluate our archiver in this context.
The Kopano Archiver was basically conceived as a tool for optimizing load distribution and storage costs in large environments. With the Kopano Archiver, a set of rules can be defined which allows elements (e.g. older than 30 days) to be moved to another Kopano node. Since the number and frequency of accesses to “old e-mails” are less frequent than accesses to current e-mails, the secondary Kopano node can also be equipped with less expensive hardware requirements than the primary system for day-to-day business. In the user’s e-mail folder, only a “header” is found for old e-mails, but not the complete mail nor attachments. In this way, e-mails remain transparently accessible to users, but are seamlessly provided by the archiver.
With the performance of current mainstream hardware, however, the Kopano Archiver is no longer as important as it was a few years ago. Even with moderate systems, several thou-sand users can usually be served without any problems.
Although Archvier can also be used to create an archive that logs data (cf. https://documentation.kopano.io/kopano_archiver_manual/), the current legal requirements in Germany and the EU go beyond the potential of the tool.
The Kopano Archiver is also not advertised as a legally compliant archive. Our focus is primarily on groupware. We do not have any templates for procedural documentation within the framework of the current legal requirements. But this is actually not a problem for Kopano customers, because we have a partner who focuses on email-archiving for his product.
The Benno MailArchive (cf. https://www.benno-mailarchiv.de/) is very popular in this context, especially in the German-speaking open source environment.
The manufacturer (our partner LWsystems, cf.https://www.lw-systems.de) has been offering integration in the Kopano WebApp for a long time.
So: If you are looking for an e-mail archive, you should not rely on Kopano Archiver, but trust specialised products such as Benno Mailarchiv.
